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HU Credits:
2
Degree/Cycle:
2nd degree (Master)
Responsible Department:
Cultural Studies-Individual Graduate Prog.
Semester:
1st Semester
Teaching Languages:
English
Campus:
Mt. Scopus
Course/Module Coordinator:
Prof. Louise Bethlehem
Coordinator Office Hours:
Monday 15:00-16:00
Teaching Staff:
Prof Louise Bethlehem
Course/Module description:
Post-colonial theory explores the impact of European colonization upon the societies which it subjugated, recognizing that the cultural and political struggles which colonization set in motion continue to influence the present. Central concerns relate to the impact of European languages, institutions and epistemologies on colonized societies. The foundational gesture of postcolonialism consisted in uncovering the link between Western knowledge systems, exemplified in discourses such as Said’s “Orientalism,” and the maintenance of colonial power. As a historiographical method, postcolonialism orients itself to the struggles of all sectors of colonial society, both elite and popular, in elucidating colonial resistance. It is concerned with forms of resistance on the part of the colonized, and explores the struggles over racialized identity and gender, as well as representations of place and history in a colonial setting. This course seeks to elucidate these intersecting themes through an exploration of cinematic representations of the colonial experience read in relation to formative theoretical texts of the postcolonial paradigm.
Course/Module aims:
The course aims to present central concepts of postcolonial theory and to discuss the historical contexts which gave rise to them. Such concepts include Franz Fanon’s phenomenological exploration of “blackness” and his spatialized reading of colonial history; Edward Said’s “Orientalism”; Homi Bhabha’s notions of “ambivalence,” “mimicry” and “hybridity”; the concept of “subalternity” that the Subaltern Studies collective developed on the basis of the work of Antonio Gramsci; the gendering of subalternity in the work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; as well as the correlation between colonialism and nationalism in the work of Dipesh Chrakrabarty.
Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
Upon completion of the course, the student will be able to apply the postcolonial lexicon to the analysis of literary and cinematic texts. The student will recognize the common analytic basis of a variety of theoretical interventions on the part of such scholars as Fanon, Said, Bhabha, Spivak and Chakrabarty, among others.
Attendance requirements(%):
100%
Teaching arrangement and method of instruction:
In order to make our learning experience as effective as possible, this course combines synchronous teaching (online lectures during which we interact in real time) with asynchronous teaching (reading assignments, short reading responses, forums and activities that you complete independently before class). The whole range of activities is reflected in the composition of the final grade for the course.
Course/Module Content:
The course begins with two introductory sessions that establish a shared vocabulary between us. It then stages two "laboratories" each exploring a different theme through theoretical texts and movies.
The first laboratory "Ontology" looks at the material body, gender and interracial desire in the colonial context. The central texts here are Franz Fanon _Black Skin, White Masks_ and a work of cinema, Claire Dénis _Chocolat_(1988)
The second laboratory "History" focuses on questions of history, historiography and their relationship with epistemology as well as the archive. The central texts here are "The Artifice of History: Who Speaks for Indian Pasts" by Dipesh Chakrabarty (1994) and Deepa Mehta's movie _Fire_ (1996).
The course ends with a workshop exploring keywords that students develop together in small groups and retrospective session which also establishes guidelines for the final paper.
Week-by-week readings, short stimuli, and class forums will be made available on the Moodle site for the course.
All meetings will take place on ZOOM
Required Reading:
Anderson, Benedict
1983 “Introduction,” and “Cultural Roots,” in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso).
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin
2007 “Ambivalence”; “Hybridity”; “Mimicry” in Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts (New York and London: Routledge). [Each term listed there separately].
Bhabha, Homi K.
1994 “The Other Question: Stereotype, Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism” in The Location of Culture 66-92 (London and New York: Routledge).
Chakrabarty, Dipesh
1994 “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for Indian Pasts,” in The New Historicism Reader, edited by H. Aram Veeser, 342-69 (New York and London: Routledge).
Desai, Jigna. 2002. "Homo on the Range: Mobile and Global Sexualities," Social Text 20(4).
http://muse/jhu.edu/journals/social text/v020/20.4desai.html
Fanon, Frantz
2008 (1967). “The Fact of Blackness,” in Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. C. L. Markmann, Foreword to the 1986 edition by Homi K. Bhaba; Foreword to the 2008 edition by Ziauddin Sardar. (London: Pluto Press).
Freud, S. 2001 (1922). “Medusa’s head.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. under the general editorship of J. Strachey, in collaboration with A.Freud, assisted by A. Strachey and A. Tyson. Vol. 18, 273 –4. London: Vintage, The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
Huddart, David
2006 “The Stereotype,” in Homi K. Bhabha (London and New York: Routledge).
Kincaid, Jamaica
1997 “In History,” Callaloo 20(1):1-7.
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth&eq;0&type&eq;summary&url&eq;/journals/callaloo/v024/24.2kincaid.pdf
Landry, Donna and Gerald Maclean
1996 “Introduction: Reading Spivak,” in The Spivak Reader (London and New York: Routledge).
Mbembe, Achille
2012 “Metamorphic Thought: The Works of Frantz Fanon,” African Studies 71(1): 19-28.
Morris, Rosalind
2010 “Introduction,” in Can the Subaltern Speak: Reflections on the History of an Idea, edited by Rosalind Morris, 1-17. (New York: Columbia UP).
Muller, Adam
2007 “Notes towards a Theory of Nostalgia: Childhood and the Evocation of the Past in Two European ‘Heritage’ Films. New Literary History, 37(4): 739-760.
Noyes, John
1989 “The Capture of Space: An Episode in a Colonial Story by Hans Grim,” Pretexts 1(1): 52-63.
Prakash, Gyan. “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism,” in Cultures of Empire, edited by Catherine Hall, 120-136. (New York: Routledge).
Rajan, Rajeswari Sunder 2010 “Speaking of (Not) Hearing: Death and the Subaltern,” in Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea,” edited by Rosalind C. Morris, 117-138 (New York: Columbia University Press).
Said, Edward
2006 [1978] “Orientalism” in The Postcolonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth
Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, 24-27 (London and New York: Routledge).
Sanders, Mark. 2006. “Literature, Reading and Transnational Literacy,” in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Live Theory, 1-29. (London: Continuum).
Shohat, Ella
(2006) Travelling ‘Postcolonial’, Third Text, 20:3-4, 287-291, DOI:
10.1080/09528820600855402
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty
1988 (1985). “Can the subaltern speak?” In Marxism and the interpretation of culture, eds. C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, 271 –313. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Stoler, Ann Laura
2002 “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender and Morality in the Making of Race” in Carnal
Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of
California Press).
Watson, Ruth
2007. “Beholding the Colonial Past in Claire Dénis’s Chocolat” in Black and White in Color:
African History on Screen, edited by Vivian Beckford-Smith and Richard Mendelsohn,
185-202 (Oxford: James Currey).
Additional Reading Material:
Recommended additional reading
Anderson, Benedict
1983 “Introduction,” and “Cultural Roots,” in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso).
Quayson, Ato
2000 Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice or Process (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
Said, Edward
1978 Orientalism (New York: Pantheon).
Young, Robert J.C.
2003 Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Grading Scheme :
Additional information:
Regular weekly attendance is obligatory.
Regular weekly participation in the Forum is obligatory.
Completing the reading reports is a precondition for handing in a final paper in the course.
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