116-045 Welcome Unreason: French Critical Thought and its Dissidents

Note

Availability

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

A major in French (Post-VCE French stream), or equivalent.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

The course focuses on major movements in French critical theory that developed in the 1960s and 1970s: Structuralism, Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Post-Modernism. We look at radically new interpretive methods and interpretations of French texts proposed by: Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan. In the work of these philosopher-theorists, there is a full-scale questioning of meaning and representation (the signified), replaced by the concept of 'text' and 'textuality' (the signifier); reference becomes infinitely 'deferred' and normative discursive systems are considered suspect. At the end of the course, students should have gained a critical understanding of the most significant thinkers to have shaped French thought since the 1960s, and should be able to apply certain methods of criticism to literary texts taken taken from a range of genres.

Assessment

Participation and preparation for class, and a classpaper of 2000 words, subsequently written up, and an essay of 3000 words.

Prescribed Texts

Extracts of texts by Althusser, Deleuze, Foucault, Irigaray and Lacan will be compiled by the Department.

• R Barthes, S/Z. Seuil 1976 (Folio).
• J Baudrillard, Simulacres et simulation. Galilée 1981.
• J Derrida, L'Ecriture et la différence. Seuil 1967.
• J Kristeva, Semiotiké. Seuil 1972.