HNRS 302 - "Sex, Lies, Texts and Webs"

Burnham 205

Dr. Charles Ess
Campus phone: 7230
e-mail: cmess@lib.drury.edu
Office: Burnham 215
Office hours: MWF 9:00-11:00 a.m.
or by appointment

Required Texts:

Richard Appignanesi and Chris Garratt. Introducing Postmodernism (New York: Totem Books, 1995)

Jean-François Lyotard. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Friedrich Nietzsche. The Gay Science.

The Portable Nietzsche. Kaufmann transl.

Plato. The Republic. (Bloom translation)

The Symposium and the Phaedrus: Plato's Erotic Dialogues. Transl. William S. Cobb. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993.

Course Web site: http://www.drury.edu/faculty/ess/HNRS/coursedesc.html

Additional readings, Internet resources to be announced) 

Course Description: We will explore the debate between postmodernism and the Western tradition (as represented by Plato and Nietzsche) through several themes, beginning with:

sexuality/eros(including feminist approaches);

lies (the Platonic "noble lie," Nietzsche's understanding of lies and truth, and postmodernists' emphasis on narrative/fiction as truth); and

books/webs (the "literacy" of print and texts vs. the "secondary orality" of electronic culture, including hypertexts and the World Wide Web).

In addition, we can also consider:

dualism and the debate between the rational and the a/irrational;

traditional, structuralist, and poststructuralist/postmodernist theories of language;

capitalism and postmodernism;

feminism and postmodernism; and

additional themes and interests which you bring to the class and discover through our work together.

General Overview

We will pursue a "spiral pedagogy" (or, alternatively, a ring structure):

Weeks 1-3: What is Postmodernism?

Readings: Appignanesi and Garratt, Introducing Postmodernism

Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition.

Weeks 4-7: What Did Plato Really Say?

Readings: The Republic, Phaedrus, Symposium (and others?)

Secondary sources: Leo Strauss and others

Weeks 8-11: What Did Nietzsche Really Say?

Readings: selections from The Gay Science, Zarathustra, and other primary texts.

Secondary sources: Megill and others

Weeks 12-13: Postmodernism Revisited

Individual and group work/presentation in:

a) course themes

eros in Plato and Foucault;

truth and lie in Plato, Nietzsche, and postmodernism;

literacy, print, and postmodern/ hypertextual/electronic culture.

b) other themes as we develop them - and/or further investigation into traditional and postmodernist figures, topics, etc.

Weeks 14-15 (finals week): Research / Summaries / Conclusions

Individual and group projects/in-class presentations

For Ess's take on the modern/postmodern debate, see "Modernism," Postmodernism: dogmatism vs. relativism

Primary texts:

* Derrida, Jacques. Différance.

* _____. Selections from Natoli and Hutcheon, A Postmodern Reader

PN 98 .P67 P697 1993

* Foucault. Selections from Natoli and Hutcheon, A Postmodern Reader

* Habermas. Selected essays on Derrida and Foucault, from The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987..

Lyotard. The PostModern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.

Secondary resources

* Jonathan Arac, ed. After Foucault: Humanistic Knowledge, Postmodern Challenges. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988. B2430.F724 A64 1988

* Andrew Benjamin, ed. Judging Lyotard. New York: Routledge, 1992. See especially the essays by Emilia Steuerman and David Ingram. B2430.L964 J83 1992

* Charles Jencks. "Late Modernism and Post Modernism," and "Irrational Rationalism," from The New Moderns.

* Richard Kearney and Marc Rainwater. The Continental Philosophy Reader. New York: Routledge, 1996. See especially Part III, which includes selections from Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Foucault, Barthes, Kristeva, Deleuze, Irigaray, Lyotard, and Derrida.

* David Kolb. Postmodern Sophistications. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

* Thomas McCarthy, David Hoy. Critical Theory. Cambridge, Mass., USA : B. Blackwell, 1994. B 809.3 .H68 1994

Alec McHoul and Wendy Grace. A Foucault Primer: Discourse, power and the subject. Washington Square, NY: New York University Press, 1993.

* Allan Megill. Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida.

* Natoli, Joseph and Linda Hutcheon. A Postmodern Reader. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993.

* Norris, Christopher. Derrida. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

* _____. What's Wrong with Postmodernism: Critical Theory and the Ends of Philosophy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

* John Sallis, ed. Deconstruction and Philosophy: the Texts of Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Gary Shapiro. Nietzschean Narratives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Leo Strauss. "Introduction," Persecution and the Art of Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Communication theory, hypertext, etc.

James W. Chesebro and Dale A. Bertelsen, analyzing media: communication technologies as symbolic and cognitive systems (New York: Guilford Press, 1996).

Diana Greco. Cyborg: Engineering the Body Electric. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems. (Storyspace documents).

David Kolb. Socrates in the Labyrinth. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems. (Storyspace documents).

George P. Landow, ed. Hyper/Text/Theory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

______, ed. Writing at the Edge: Student Webs from Brown University Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems. (Storyspace documents).

[Additional examples of hypertexts:

A Father and Two Sons: An American Bible Society Multimedia CD-ROM for Windows

David Anderson, Robert Cavalier, and Preston K. Covey. a right to die? the Dax Cowart case. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Robert Cavalier, Preston Covey, Elizabeth A. Style, Andrew Thompson. The Issue of Abortion in America. New York: Routledge, 1998.

The Evolution of the English Bible. University of Michigan Press

Perseus 2.0: Interactive Sources and Studies on Ancient Greece. (Includes the complete works of Plato in English and Greek, as well as an extensive database of cultural and historical resources.)

See also their web site: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

Web-based materials

See initial web site: <http://www.drury.edu/faculty/ess/postmodernism/courseov.html> for links to additional resources, including the Motet conferencing software.

The Habermas/Foucault Debate:

* d'Entrèves, Maurizio Passerin, and Seyla Benhabib. Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity: Critical Essays on The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997.

* Ess, "Enlightenment, Democracy, and Communicative Ethics: an Introduction to the Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas"

* Kelly, Michael. Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994.

* Jana Sawicki, "Foucault and Feminism: A Critical Reappraisal," (in Kelly)

Capitalism and postmodernism.

* Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989.

* Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism: or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.

(See notes on Harvey and Jameson in "Resources on Postmodernism and the Habermas/Foucault Debate," located at <http://www.drury.edu/faculty/ess/postmodernism/resources.html>.)

Feminism and postmodernism.

* Jane Flax, Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990.
(See notes on Flax in "Resources on Postmodernism and the Habermas/Foucault Debate," part of the course web site, located at <http://www.drury.edu/faculty/ess/postmodernism/resources.html>.)

Chris Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructualist Theory, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1997), esp. ch. 7, "Feminism and Postmodernism."

Alternatives to the (false?) modern/postmodern dilemma

* Benhabib, Seyla. Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism Contemporary Ethics. New York: Routledge, 1992

* Bernstein, Richard J. The New Constellation: the Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.

Cutrofello, Andrew. Discipline and Critique: Kant, Poststructuralism, and the Problem of Resistance. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994.

* David Ray Griffin et al, eds. Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy:Peirce, James, Bergson, Whitehead, and Hartshorne.