Syllabus - Painting Bohemian Lives

absinthe, ideology, & the politics of urban life
Louie Dean Valencia
[email protected]
@BurntCitrus on Twitter
www.paintingbohemia.org Office Hours:
Dealy 650|Tuesday/Friday, 4-5:30pm
Rodrigue’s|Thursday, by appointment
Class Location: Dealy 306|T/F 1:00-2:15
This digital humanities course examines the emergence of bohemian culture through a study of
gender, race, class, and nationalism in modernity. With a wide-ranging chronological and
geographical scope, the selected bohemias represent diverse spatial, aesthetic, economic, political,
and social histories. This class will also look at the urban spaces where bohemian culture is found,
analysing its intersections with bourgeois and marginal cultures. Students will study primary source
documents, secondary texts, and graphic novels. Students will maintain a website, create interactive
maps and other digital content, record oral histories, and actively use social media to explore
bohemian cultures found in New York City. This course demands self-motivation, dedicated
reading, critical writing, and class participation.
Note: Changes may be made to this syllabus during the course of the semester.
Required Texts
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Rebel Cities: From the Right to
the City to the Urban
Revolution, by David Harvey,
ISBN 1781680744
The Beach Beneath the Street:
The Everyday Life and
Glorious Times of the
Situationist International, by
Mckenzie Wark, ISBN 1781688389
Hideous Absinthe: A History of the Devil in a Bottle, by Jad Adams, ISBN 1845116844
On Bohemia, The Code of the Self-Exiled, edited by Marigay and César Craña, ISBN 0887382924
The Beats: A Graphic History, by Harvey Pekar, Ed Piskor and Paul Buhle, ISBN 0809016494
Bohemians: A Graphic History, by Paul Buhle and David Berger, ISBN 1781682615
5 September 2014; Revision 1
Class attendance is fundamental to performing well in this class. Furthermore, it is also an
indicator of a student’s seriousness in her/his studies, and is required. Consider this class to be like
a job—if you cannot attend class you should contact the professor prior to class. Attendance will be
taken every day, and will be an important consideration when figuring grades at the end of semester.
Under most circumstances, no more than three absences will be allowed without incurring
severe penalty to one’s participation grade. A written excuse will be required in order to make up
a major project/other evaluation (which may be made up at the professor’s discretion, and may be
more comprehensive). A “written excuse” means written/printed verification from the University, a
doctor, or the dean’s office that the student’s absence was legitimate. Students must arrive before the
end of roll call, or run the risk of being counted absent. If you know you will be late in advance,
students should contact the professor and make arrangements. Leaving class early must be
discussed via e-mail or in person with the professor prior to class. Leaving class early without
prior discussion with the professor will result in an absence and/or further repercussions.
Course Conduct
Students are expected to cooperate in maintaining a classroom environment that is conducive to
learning for fellow students and faculty. No personal attacks will be tolerated. If a student feels
uncomfortable because of something said in class, please arrange to discuss the matter with me.
Academic dishonesty of any kind—cheating, plagiarism, etc.—will not be tolerated. Any hint of such
action will result in an immediate and irrevocable failing grade on the assignment, and the student
will face the possibility of a failing grade and/or expulsion from the class. If the student has
questions as to what plagiarism is, I am available for any questions s/he might have.
§ Food is allowed as long as it is not overly crunchy. Drinks are allowed—except for the alcoholic
variety. Absinthe is not allowed in class. Laptops are allowed; however, technology should
enhance your learning experience, not detract from it. Phones must be placed on SILENT. No
excessive chatting/texting (good texting: “I’m in class, chat later”).
§ Students are expected to respect both the professor and fellow colleagues in all venues of lecture
and discussion. This includes refraining from personal attacks during discussion. Students are
expected to conduct themselves in a manner fitting of a university classroom.
§ Students who feel the need to nap during class will be excused from the classroom, and may be
marked absent for the day. Such action will be considered in the student’s participation grade.
§ If a student encounters a problem with the Blackboard website or the WordPress page, it is the
student’s responsibility to alert the professor as soon as possible regarding any technical difficulty
encountered.
Students with special needs should identify themselves at the beginning of the semester. All
necessary assistance and aid will be given to facilitate their active participation and success in the
classroom.
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Grading.
Students may earn up to 100 points over the course of the semester. Students are expected
to earn points through ENGAGED participation and by creating projects in consultation
with professor and/or groups.
25 Participation/Quality Control Points
Participation is based on attendance and regular, active participation in class and
discussion/activities. If students publish sloppy or unsatisfactory work, demonstrate poor
cooperation, their quality control grade can suffer.
Participation/Quality Control GRADING
The most common grades, given by instructors, are letter grades representing levels of academic
achievement. These letter grades, their description and their quality points are indicated below:
Grades
20 pts+ | A
17.5 pts | A15 pts | B+
12.5 pts | B
10 pts | B7.5 pts | C+
5 pts | C
2.5 pts | C0 pts | D
Description
Excellent; Honors-level work, outstanding.
Still excellent.
Very Good; High Level of performance.
Good; Solid & above average level of performance.
Good; Still above average.
Average level of performance.
Satisfactory; Acceptable level of performance.
Minimally acceptable.
Passing, but unsatisfactory; Below average
performance.
NOTICE: If it becomes apparent that students are not doing their reading, not
posting, not participating in class discussion, or not bringing their printed material,
POP QUIZZES may be administered at any point in the semester. These pop quizzes
will be used to assess quality control.
75 Project Point Scoring
Students can acquire up to 75 points based upon their finished projects. Students are expected to
maintain a high level of production in their chosen projects. Students are expected to produce
multimedia of semi-professional quality, at minimum. If a student does not have the technical
expertise, they are encouraged to work with fellow students to achieve such standards. If the
student’s project does not meet publication standards, they will not receive points for that
publication until they do.
END OF SEMESTER REPORT
At the end of the term, students must submit an end-of-semester report, outlining each project
produced, and a self-assessment of their work. This report may include copies of text, feedback
students have received in comments, and any other material the student deems worthy. This report
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should include a running count of all student work/points acquired over the semester. Report must
be submitted by the designated final day and should not be longer than 2-3 pages. In this report,
students can petition for a holiday bonus based on their performance.
REQUIRED:
At least ONE Special interest historical article (with photographs): 15 possible points
ADDITIONAL Project Points:
Special interest articles (w/ photographs): 15 possible points, 900-word minimum
5-minute podcasts/interviews: 12 possible points
Oral History Interview (Video w/introduction): 15 points
Opening/Exhibit/Event Reviews: 12 points
Documentary Videos (w/ brief intro text): 15+ points possible
Infographics (w/ introductory text): 12 points possible
Interactive Maps (w/ introductory text): 12 points possible
Web Comics Series: Variable
Photographic Series: Variable
Stage Productions/Re-enactments (must be videoed): Variable
Text editing: 2 points
OTHER: Students will be compensated for various other work/tasks commissioned.
EDITORS: PRIOR to online publication text heavy projects MUST be reviewed and approved
by at least two other people. Editors will be compensated 2 points for each edited publication. In the
event that egregious mistakes are published, those points will be taken back.
COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS:
Students may choose to work collaboratively. Students will divide the points possible amongst
themselves—in accordance to their workload.
ALL assignments are due based upon the self-proposed deadline. On rare occasions
extensions may be given at the professor’s discretion.
EXTRA CREDIT:
Students may petition for an additional point bonus based upon the project. This is reserved for
particularly demanding projects and must be consulted during the project planning stage.
By taking this class you agree to published all your projects under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, see more:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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Act I:
Setting the Stage
WEEK 1—An Introduction to Painting Bohemian Lives
Friday, 4 September—Long Live Bohemia! Um.. or not?
Discuss:
“If a Bohemian Falls in the Forest...”.
Discuss:
Inigo Thomas, “Bohemian New York”.
WEEK 2—Setting the Scene: What is a Bohemia(n)?
Tuesday, 9 September—The Social and Literary Origins of Bohemia
Discuss:
Mike Sell, “Bohemianism, the Cultural Turn of the Avant-garde, and
Forgetting the Roma”.
Discuss:
Jerrold Seigel, “From Bohemia to the Avant-Garde: Dissolving the
Boundaries”, On Bohemia, p. 796.
Discuss:
César Graña, “The Ideological Significance of Bohemian Life”, On
Bohemia, p. 3.
Discuss:
Ephrain Mizruchi, “Bohemia as a Means of Social Regulation”, On
Bohemia, p. 13.
Friday, 12 September—Place and Space of Revolution
Discuss:
Ben Highmore, Cityscapes, Chapters 1-2.
Discuss:
Henri Murger, “The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter”, On Bohemia, p.
42.
Discuss:
Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, “Paris: Place and Space of Revolution”,
Paris As Revolution: Writing the Nineteenth-Century City, Chapter I.
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft296nb17v;
brand=ucpress
Planning/Workshopping
WEEK 3—Scriptwriters and Actors: Writing and Living the City
Tuesday, 16 September— Bryan Lowder Writing Workshop
Special guest Bryan Lowder, assistant editor of Outward on Slate.com.
@jbryanlowder on Twitter
READINGS TBA
Friday, 19 September—Walking the City, Writing the City
Discuss:
Henri Lefebvre, “Work and Leisure in Everyday Life” (1958) in The
Everyday Life Reader, edited by Ben Highmore.
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Discuss:
Discuss:
Edmund White, The Flâneur, p. 1-23.
Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, “The Flâneur: The City and Its
Discontents”, Chapter 3, Section I, Paris As Revolution: Writing the
Nineteenth-Century City.
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft296nb17v;
brand=ucpress
Planning/Workshopping
WEEK 4—The Painter of Modern Life: Props and Stage Direction
Tuesday, 23 September—Painting Bohemian Lives
Discuss:
Ben Highmore, “Questioning Everyday Life” in The Everyday Life
Reader, edited by Ben Highmore.
Discuss:
Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life”.
Discuss:
Patricia G. Berman, “Edvard Munch's Self-Portrait with Cigarette:
Smoking and the Bohemian Persona”.
Friday, 26 September— Painting Bohemian Lives, Walter Benjamin
Discuss:
Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life”
Discuss:
Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire” in The Everyday
Life Reader, edited by Ben Highmore (1939)
Discuss:
Walter Benjamin, “Myth of the Flâneur”, selections (1930)
Planning/Workshopping
Act II:
Making the Audience Uncomfortable
WEEK 5—Seeing Green Fairies, Queer Theory and the Death Drive
Tuesday, 30 September—Lee Edelman
Discuss:
Lee Adelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, introduction.
Discuss:
Jad Adams, Hideous Absinthe, Chapter 1-4.
Friday, 3 October—Lauren Berlant
Discuss:
Lauren Berlant, “Cruel Optimism”, essay.
Discuss:
Jad Adams, Hideous Absinthe, Chapter 5-8.
Planning/Workshopping
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WEEK 6—Occupy 1871: Radical Spaces and Revolutionaries
Tuesday, 7 October — The Paris Commune
Discuss:
Casey Harison, “The Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian
Revolution of 1905, and the Shifting of the Revolutionary Tradition”.
Roger V. Gould, “Multiple Networks and Mobilization in the Paris
Commune”.
Friday, 10 October — Arthur Rimbaud
Discuss:
Arthur Rimbaud, selections.
Discuss:
Kristin Ross, “Rimbaud and the Resistance to Work”.
Planning/Workshopping
Act III:
Reinventing the Stage
WEEK 7—Taking the Stage
Tuesday, 14 October — Michael Warner
Discuss:
Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, Introduction, Chapter 1.
Discuss:
Paul Buhle, The Bohemians, Introduction, Chapter 1-2.
Friday, 17 October —Cancelled
WEEK 8—Salons and Making Spaces
Tuesday, 21 October — Michael Warner
Discuss:
Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, Chapters 2-5.
Discuss:
Paul Buhle, The Bohemians, Introduction, Chapters 3-4.
Discuss:
Allen Churchill, “Patroness of Rebellion: Mabel Dodge’s
“evenings””, On Bohemia, p. 519.
Friday, 24 October — Sharon Zukin
Discuss:
Sharon Zukin, Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places,
Introduction and Chapter 1.
Discuss:
Kiki de Montparnasse, Memoirs, selections.
Planning/Workshopping
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WEEK 9—Performance and Improvisation: Bohemian Cities
Tuesday, 28 October — Gertrude Stein
Discuss:
Paul Buhle, The Bohemians, Introduction, Chapters 5-7.
Discuss:
Gertrude Stein, Paris France, Introduction, part II.
Discuss:
Andrea Barnet, All Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich
Village and Harlem, “Bessie Smith: ‘tain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do”.
Friday, 31 October —Gender and Performing the City
Discuss:
Sy Adler and Johanna Brenner, “Gender and Space: Lesbians and
Gay Men in the City”.
Discuss:
Iain Borden, “Performing the City”, from The Subcultures Reader
Discuss:
Judith Butler, Your Behavior Creates Your Gender,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRw4H8YWoDA
Discuss:
Paul Buhle, The Bohemians, Introduction, Chapters 8-9.
Planning/Workshopping
WEEK 10— Creating Beatniks Boundaries: Intersections between Radicals,
Racism and Misogynism.
Tuesday, 4 November—Norman Mailer and Jack Kerouac
Discuss:
Norman Mailer, “The White Negro”, On Bohemia, p. 185.
Discuss:
Pekar, Piskor, Buhle, The Beats: A Graphic History, Introduction-94.
Discuss:
Jack Kerouac, “The Origins of the Beat Generation”, On Bohemia, p.
195.
Friday, 7 November —bell hooks
Discuss:
Herbert Gold, “The Beat Mystique”, On Bohemia, p. 203.
Discuss:
Pekar, Piskor, Buhle, The Beats: A Graphic History, p. 95-193.
Discuss:
bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, selections.
Planning/Workshopping
WEEK 11—1960s and the Bohemia as a Mass movement
Tuesday, 11 November —Guy Debard
Discuss:
McKenzie Wark, Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Tims of
The Situationist International, p. vii-59.
Discuss:
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, selections.
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Friday, 14 November —Valerie Solanas
Discuss:
McKenzie Wark, Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Tims of
The Situationist International, p. 61-123.
Discuss:
Valerie Solanas, The S.C.U.M. Manifesto, excerpts.
Planning/Workshopping
WEEK 12— Situationalists and Hippies
Tuesday, 18 November—Richard Florida
Discuss:
McKenzie Wark, Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Tims of
The Situationist International, p. 124-159.
Discuss:
Richard Florida, “Cities and the Creative Class”.
Friday, 21 November —David Harvey/Student Articles
Discuss:
David Harvey, Rebel Cities, preface-p. 88.
Discuss:
TBA.
WEEK 13—Rebel Cities: Connecting Bohemian NYC
Tuesday, 25 November —David Harvey/Student Articles
Discuss:
David Harvey, Rebel Cities, preface-p. 88-164.
Discuss:
TBA.
Friday, 28 November —Thanksgiving
WEEK 14— Rebel Cities: Connecting Bohemian NYC, II
Tuesday, 2 December— Student Articles
Discuss:
TBA.
Friday, 5 December — Student Articles
Discuss:
TBA.
WEEK 15— Rebel Cities: Connecting Bohemian NYC, III
Tuesday, 9 December —Student Articles
Discuss:
TBA.
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What Do We Study in Cultural Studies?
The Critical Theory/Structuralism/Post-structuralism/Deconstruction Approach
Social Constructs: To construct is to build something. A social construct is an idea or concept that
people(s) have built over time. Humans organise their actions and thoughts around social
constructs. For example, race is a social construct this way: we all are made up of flesh and blood,
and need to eat, breathe, drink, and breed to survive as individuals and as a species. Race implies that
a person's colour or culture should rank or differentiate people with regard to needs and rights and
entitlements. Once you peel the skin away and forget where we were born, we are literally all the
same. Social constructs are the result of human choices in a given society, not unchangeable truths.
Social constructs can be deconstructed.
Tools for the Analysis of Culture:
Class: is a social construct based upon hierarchies created by societies. These hierarchies divide
society by: 1) capital, or individual monetary worth; 2) and/or, cultural capital, or socially
constructed norms (ex: speech, clothing, behavioural norms). Class hierarchies depend upon an
accepted common belief that something has value (gold, silver, attire, way of presenting oneself.)
For more, see: E. P. Thompson, Terry Eagleton, Pierre Bourdieu, and Edward Said.
Gender: is a social construct that assigns meaning to what is “male” and “female”. Gender is not
biological. Gender constructions rely upon a shared belief held by a group of people that determines
that the roles that should be assigned to a sex (male, female). These roles constructed by a given
society dictate what behaviours are held as the “norm” in a given society. According to Judith
Butler, gender is something that is “performed”. “Masculinity” and “femininity” are socially
constructed; what might be considered “feminine” or “masculine” in one context might not
necessarily be so in another context. The colour “pink” is not inherently feminine, but rather is a
socially constructed perception of what “pink” signifies. For more, see: Joan Scott, Judith Butler,
R.W. Connell, bell hooks, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
Sex: Biological differentiation between “male” and “female” sex organs, which is not limited to only
two categories. Sex is not the same as gender.
Nationality: is socially constructed based upon what Benedict Anderson calls “Imagined
Communities”. Nationality is not the same as ethnicity, although their can be overlap. While a group
of people might have the same nationality, they could belong to different ethnic groups. Moreover,
people who identity as a given ethnic identity can also identity as different nationalities: i.e.,
Ireland/Northern Ireland; Catalans, Gallegos, Basques all consider themselves Iberians, like
Castilians. Despite living under the Spanish state, many Catalans, Gallegos, and Basques consider
themselves not to be Spaniard. All Castilians consider themselves to be Spaniards. Comparatively,
most Scots, Welsh, and English people indentify as being “British”; however, many Northern Irish
do not—despite legally being considered part of the United Kingdom. For more, see: Benedict
Anderson, Max Weber, and Edward Said.
Race: is also socially constructed. European anthropologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries invented various systems so that to classify race based on phenotypes, such as skin colour,
hair, body shapes, and skull measurements. These anthropologies attempted to codify perceived
differences amongst large swaths of human populations over vast geographies. In the late-twentieth
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century, scholars have pointed to race as a social construction—the features that we associate with a
given “race” are not inherent, but determined by human made constructions. For more, see: bell
hooks, Gloria J. Ladson-Billings, Camara Phyllis Jones, Edward Said, and Cornel West.
Ethnicity: is a social construction. Ethnicity refers to a group of people that share common cultural
practices and geography, this might include: language, religion, celebrations, and food. This should
not be confused with race, as people who might be the same “race” could be of different ethnicities,
or nationalities. Often, ethnicity is determined by genealogy or ancestry. Ethnicity depends not on
phenotype, but culture, religion, and ways of behaviour. For more, see: Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said,
and Ali Rattansi.
Key Terms in History:
Eurocentrism: Eurocentric ideas or practice; a focus on Europe to the exclusion of the rest of the
world (Oxford English Dictionary). Moreover, Eurocentrism is a type of ethnocentrism that places
European, and more broadly Western, culture as primary, to the detriment (and oppression) of nonWestern cultures.
Historiography: is the history of the ways history is told. Historians compare the different ways a
history has been portrayed at different times, so that to gain insight as to the ways history has been
used. (It’s all very meta).
Primary Source: An example of a primary source would be a contemporary account, or document
from the period/place being studied: i.e., The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, is a
primary text written in the eighteenth century.
Secondary Source: An article, book, or text about a historical moment, which integrates the study
of primary sources, with other literature ABOUT the subject. The Great Cat Massacre is a secondary
text written in the late-twentieth century that uses primary texts.
Thick description: a term coined by Clifford Geertz in this work The Interpretation of Cultures, in
which the anthropologist discusses “webs of significance”. Geertz argues that through the study of
the particular, the micro, one can start to understand and interpret culture through that lens,
building layer, upon layer.
Basic Terms in Cultural Theory:
* indicates adapted from Malcolm Hayward’s definitions: http://www.english.iup.edu/mhayward/terms.htm
Agency: The power by which a particular individual, group, or text could act, or the mode or
means of action.*
Alienation: is the feeling of isolation and marginalisation from the world demonstrated in a form of
disaffection. Marx describes alienation as arising from private labour, and the commodification of
labour. Marx describes that under Capitalism the fact that workers sell their labour to capitalist in
order to make money to survive. He further argues that thus workers are alienated from their work,
as they do not own the product of their work, as it belongs to the capitalist.
Appropriation: Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin first used the word to describe a holistic language
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theory. Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin first used the word to describe a holistic language theory.*
Authority: Having control or power or assumed or real dominance.*
Capitalism: An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods,
by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the
distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
(Merriam-Webster Dictionary).
Consumerism: the fact or practice of an increasing consumption of goods: a critique of American
consumerism. (Random House Dictionary)
Commodification: is the transformation of goods, ideas, or other entities that may not normally be
regarded as goods into a commodity. (Wikipedia)
Hegemony: The way a governing power wins consent to its rule from those it subjugates, or the
ways it coerces those it rules (Eagleton citing Gramsci 112). Having complete control over a system
or a structure. A hegemonic discourse is a language that orders and organise the things that it talks
about.*
Subaltern: Having a lower rank or position, especially in terms of existing in a role of being
dominated or subject to authority, as being a woman or a member of a colonized or previously
colonized nation.*
Transgression: An act that goes against a socially constructed law, rule, or code of conduct; an
offense.
Decolonisation: The attempt to cleanse a particular culture or its cultural productions of the
influence of a colonial culture.*
Diegesis: The spatial and temporal universe in which a story unfolds, the linguistic actualization of
linguistic structures.* Ex, within the diegesis of Superman comics, Superman is the champion of
“Truth, Justice, and the American Way”. Outside of that diegesis, he is a character owned by Warner
Brothers’s subsidiary DC Entertainment, that is a character marketed to appeal to American and
International audiences differently.
Essentialism: A claim that is all encompassing, that claims superiority over an “other”.
Essentialism is comparable to biologism. Examples: "Women are essentially…" "The poor is
essentially…", "Hippies are essentially…", "Spaniards are essentially…"
Grand Narrative: is an old-style construction of history, imposing narrative in what might be
considered a reductive constructive of history, flattening out “history”. Post-Modern criticism of
the Grand Narrative accuses it of denying people “agency”, and only considers “great men”. Often,
Grand Narrative history assumes that humanity is moving in a singular progressive direction—
things are constantly getting better.
Heteronormativity: is the cultural bias in favour of opposite-sex relationships of a sexual nature,
and against same-sex relationships of a sexual nature. Because the former are viewed as normal and
the latter are not, lesbian and gay relationships are subject to a heteronormative bias. (see:
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Alessandro Pratesi’s chapter “New Frontiers in Research: Using Visual Methods with Marginalised
Communities” in Inclusive Communities: A Critical Reader, pg 196.)
Hybridity: an important concept in post-colonial theory, referring to the integration (or, mingling)
of cultural signs and practices from the colonizing and the colonized cultures ("integration" may be
too orderly a word to represent the variety of stratagems, desperate or cunning or good-willed, by
which people adapt themselves to the necessities and the opportunities of more or less oppressive or
invasive cultural impositions, live into alien cultural patterns through their own structures of
understanding, thus producing something familiar but new). The assimilation and adaptation of
cultural practices, the cross-fertilization of cultures, can be seen as positive, enriching, and dynamic,
as well as oppressive. (See: John Lye’s “Some Issues in Postcolonial Theory”,
http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/postcol.php)
Imperialism: the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign
countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies (adapted from Random House
Dictionary). Imperialism implies a direct or indirect control of a country for the purpose of acquiring
power and/or profit.
Intersectionality: ““Intersectionality” is the name that is now given to the complex of reciprocal
attachments and sometimes polarizing conflicts that confront both individuals and movements as
they seek to "navigate" among the raced, gendered, and class-based dimensions of social and
political life. Both as individuals seeking to make a socially just and fulfilling "everyday life," and as
collectivities seeking to "make history" through political action and social movements, we struggle
with the unstable connections between race, gender, and class. The methodological and explanatory
framework for linking these three axes of identity and difference, of alliance and antagonism,
remains elusive. Any serious comparative historical view suggests that demands for solidarity across
race-, class-, or gender-lines are as likely to compete as to coalesce.” (taken wholly from University
of
California,
Santa
Barbara,
Center
for
New
Racial
Studies
website,
http://www.uccnrs.ucsb.edu/intersectionality)
Intersubjectivity: The idea that individuals always exist in a relationship with other individuals, with
the medium of language as mediating their relationships. "For Kant, the fact that the individual
could not experience the object as it was in itself required the postulation of another dimension
among individuals: intersubjectivity" (Godzich, 46).*
Intertextuality: A term used by Julia Kristeva to describe the pre-existing body of discourse that
makes an individual text intelligible. Every text is a response to and an interpretation of other texts,
and it can be read only in relation to them. The meaning of a text is dependent upon other texts that
it absorbs and transforms, for, as Roland Barthes puts it, "the text is not a line of words releasing a
single 'theological' meaning . . . but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of
them original, blend and clash" (Glossary of Literary Theory, Greig E. Henderson and Christopher
Brown).
Normativity: Norms are socially constructed rules of behaviour, often used to preserve social
structures and hierarchies. Normativity often conflicts with transgression.
"The Other": A notion from the psychology of Jacques Lacan that we project negative feelings or
fears from within ourselves onto our images of other people, creating a view of that other person or
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group of people as being totally opposite to ourselves.*
Paradigm: The way a discipline studies its subject, including methods, theories, facts, hypotheses,
instrumentation, standards, systems of knowledge production and dissemination, and so on. "This
essay...examines a paradigmatic shift in the nature of pleasure and its consequences for our
conception of art that occurred between the Enlightenment and Romanticism" (Godzich 49).*
Patriarchy: A form of social organization in which the father or oldest male is the head of the
family, and descent and relationship are reckoned through the male line; government or rule by a
man or men. Patriarchal systems are marked by the predominance of men in positions of power and
influence in society, with cultural values and norms being seen as favouring men. (Adapted from
Oxford English Dictionary). Patriarchy further is related to ideas of sexism and androcentrism, or
“male centeredness”.
Phallocentric: Centred on the phallus, especially as the symbol of male dominance and authority;
dominated by male attitudes or cultural outlook, man-centred. Moreover, phallocentric tendencies
tend to marginalise what might be called “feminine”. (adapted from Oxford English Dictionary)
(Post)Colonialism: After a period of colonization. Postcolonial literature is written when a colony
achieves freedom.*
Power: in the work of Michel Foucault, power constitutes one of the three axes constitutive of
subjectification, the other two being ethics and truth. For Foucault, power implies knowledge, even
while knowledge is, concomitantly, constitutive of power: knowledge gives one power, but one has
the power in given circumstances to constitute bodies of knowledge, discourses and so on as valid
or invalid, truthful or untruthful. Power serves in making the world both knowable and controllable.
Yet, in the nature of power, as Foucault suggests in the first volume of his History of Sexuality, is
essentially proscriptive, concerned more with imposing limits on its subjects". (see: Wolfreys, Julian.
ed. Introducing Literary Theories: A Guide and Glossary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003.)
Reduction: The simplification of a concept, an idea, or entity, "reducing" it to a flattened image.
Reification: The product of a belief that creates a “real” existent out of a conceptual idea. You fear
the “boogie man” or the monster under the bed, that does not really exist, so much that you change
your way of life as though it does, and even creating a “real life” boogie man.
Sign/signifier/signified/referent: Based upon Ferdinand Saussure’s philosophy of structuralism
linguistics. A word, a photo, a scowl, a wink, or a gesture can all be considered examples of a sign,
conveying some sort of meaning. A signifier is that which is observable in the sign—e.g., the word
“cup”. That which is signified is the conceptual idea of a sign (e.g., the idea or concept of a cup). A
referent is the object to which a sign system refers (e.g., the cup itself).
Subjectivity: The way that a person constructs their own identity, based upon their perspective of
the world. While a person might be born in what is Russia, if they move to France at a young age,
they can identify as both Russian or French, or only French, or Russian.
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