English 203

Other Readings and Media

Barthes, R.: Mythologies; Benjamin, W: The Arcades Project; Bowe, J et al.: Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs; Brainard, J.: I Remember; Cobb, A.: Green-Wood; Debord, G.: The Society of the Spectacle; De Certeau, M: The Practice of Everyday Life; Durand, M.: Traffic & Weather; Gladman, R.: Newcomer Can’t Swim; Highmore, B.: The Everyday Life Reader; Jameson, F: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism; Lefebvre, H.: The Production of Space; Powell, D.A. and David Trinidad: By Myself; Spahr, J.: This Connection of Everyone With Lungs; Wittgenstein, L.: On Certainty

Description

This seminar will undertake a critical reading of, and participation in, some possibilities (or impossibilities) of contemporary realisms and realities. It will query, from an array of perspectives, problems of representation, referentiality, historical awareness, resistance, spectatorship, etc., with reference to a range of theoretical works read in parallel with some recent (and largely “experimental”) literary texts. In addition to the readings, each student will be required to undertake a daily writing project of his or her own that is capable of querying its own language and the character of dailiness, within the contexts of postmodern subjectivity, cultural possibility, and ubiquitous, “late,” capitalism.