Conciousness art & Technology
This constitutes a starting point. There are also references to other relevant works by the author in question in some of the lectures that you might want to follow up on your own.
1. What does Benjamin mean by aura, and why and how do film and photography transform the character of the work of art? Resources: Benjamin, Andrew, ed., Walter Benjamin and Art, London: Continuum, 2005. Cavagnah, Thomas B., ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Production’, International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction, vol. 4, Issue
3: 27-42. Caygill, Howard, Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience, London: Routledge, 1997. Franklin, M.I., ‘Reading Walter Benjamin and Donna Haraway in the age of digital reproduction’ Information, Communication & Society. 5:4, 591-624. Geulen, Eva, The End of Art: Readings in a Rumor After Hegel, tr. James McFarland, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. See especially chapter
4. Peim, Nick, ‘Walter Benjamin in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Aura in Education: A Rereading of ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol 41, No. 3, 2007: 363-380.
2. What is at stake in Barthes’ discussion of the death of the author? Resources: Faudree, Paja, ‘What is an Indigenous Author? Minority Authorship and the Politics of Voice in Mexico’, Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 88, No. 1, 2015: 5-35.
Jestrovic, Silvija, Performances of Authorial Presence and Absence: The Author Dies Hard, Leamington Spa: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Lamarque, Peter, ‘The Death of the Author: An Analytical autopsy,’ British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 40, no. 4, 1990: 319-331. Morton, Stephen, ‘Secularism and the death and return of the author: Rereading the Rushdie affair after Joseph Anton’, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Vol. 53 (2), 2018: 316-331. Sutrop, Margrit, ‘The Death of the Literary Work’, Philosophy and Literature, vol. 18, no. 1, 1994: 38-49.
3. Discuss the relationship between Foucault’s discussion of authorship and that of Barthes. Resources: Siegle, Robert, ‘The Concept of the Author in Barthes, Foucault, and Fowles’, College Literature, Vol. 10. No. 2 (1983): 12-138. Wilson, Adrian, ‘Foucault on the “Question of the Author”: A Critical Exegesis,’ The Modern Language Review, Vol. 99, no. 2, 2004: 339-363.
4. To what extent do Benjamin, Barthes and Foucault share common ground in their conceptions of the work of art? Resources: Benjamin, Andrew, ed., Walter Benjamin and Art, London: Continuum, 2005. Caygill, Howard, Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience, London: Routledge, 1997. Siegle, Robert, ‘The Concept of the Author in Barthes, Foucault, and Fowles’, College Literature, Vol. 10. No. 2 (1983): 12-138. Wilson, Adrian, ‘Foucault on the “Question of the Author”: A Critical Exegesis,’ The Modern Language Review, Vol. 99, no. 2, 2004: 339-363. 5. What does Heidegger accomplish in his discussion of earth and world in ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’? Resources
Geulen, Eva, The End of Art: Readings in a Rumor After Hegel, James McFarland, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. See especially chapter 6. Harries, Karsten, and Dermot Moran, Art Matters: A Critical Commentary on Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”, Springer: Springer.com, 2009. Thomson, Ian, ‘Heidegger’s Aesthetics’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. N. Zalta, 2010. Online. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger-aesthetics/ (Links to an external site.) Young, Julian, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
6. Explain Levinas’s critique of Heidegger’s view of the artwork. Resources Davis, Colin, Levinas: An Introduction, Oxford: Polity Press, 1996. Robbins, Jill, Altered Reading: Levinas and Literature, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Toumayan, Alain P., Encountering the Other: The Artwork and the Problem of Difference in Blanchot and Levinas, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2004. Wall, Thomas Carl, Radical Passivity: Levinas, Blanchot, and Agamben, Albany: State University of New York, 1996. Sallis, John, ‘Levinas and the Elemental’, Research in Phenomenology, 1998, Vol. 28 (1), p. 152-159, Staehler, Tanja, ‘Images and Shadows: Levinas and the ambiguity of the aesthetic’, Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics, Vol 47 (2)123-143. 2010, 123-143. 7. How does Levinas distinguish his view of art from structuralism (e.g. Barthes)? Davis, Colin, Levinas: An Introduction, Oxford: Polity Press, 1996. Robbins, Jill, Altered Reading: Levinas and Literature, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Toumayan, Alain P., Encountering the Other: The Artwork and the Problem of Difference in Blanchot and Levinas, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2004. Wall, Thomas Carl, Radical Passivity: Levinas, Blanchot, and Agamben, Albany: State University of New York, 1996.
8. Explain the significance of the there is (il y a) for Levinas Resources Jacques, Johanna, ‘Where Nothing Happened: The Experience of War Captivity and Levinas’s Concept of the ‘“There is”’, Social and Legal Studies, 26 (2), 2017, 230-48. Marder, Michael, ‘Terror of the Ethical: On Levinas’s Il y a’, Postmodern Culture, 18, 2, 2008. McDonald, Henry, ‘Aesthetics as first philosophy: Levinas and the alterity of literary discourse’, Diacritics, 38, 4, 2008, 15-41.
9. Levinas describes art in terms of a stoppage of time. What does he mean? Davis, Colin, Levinas: An Introduction, Oxford: Polity Press, 1996. Robbins, Jill, Altered Reading: Levinas and Literature, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Toumayan, Alain P., Encountering the Other: The Artwork and the Problem of Difference in Blanchot and Levinas, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2004. Wall, Thomas Carl, Radical Passivity: Levinas, Blanchot, and Agamben, Albany: State University of New York, 1996.
10. Levinas begins his essay ‘Reality and its Shadow’ by setting up a conundrum concerning the relationship between art and criticism. Explain the conundrum, and how Levinas moves beyond it. Resources Davis, Colin, ‘Levinas the Novelist’, French Studies, LXIX, no. 3: 333-344. 11. Levinas has inspired film critics to perform Levinasian readings of films, poetry and plays, including Shakespeare. Some have focused on his ethical approach rather than his explicit discussions of art. Choose a play, literary work to discuss in relation to Levinas’s philosophy.
Resources Lené Hole, Kristin, ‘Otherwise than Hollywood: Denis, Levinas and an Aesthetic of Alterity, chapter 3 in Towards a Feminist Cinematic Ethics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015, pp.86-113. Lenhof, Kent R., ‘Relation and Responsibility: A Levinasian Reading of King Lear’, Modern Philology, Vol. 111, no. 3, 2014: 405-509. O’Brien, Eugene, ‘A Pause for Po-Ethics: Seamus Heaney and Emmanuel Levinas’, Humanities, Vol. 8 (3) 138, 2019: 1-15. Tambling, Jeremy, ‘Levinas and Macbeth’s Strange Images of Death’, Essays in Criticism, vol. 54, no. 4: 351-372. Serra, Ilaria, ‘Cinema of Compassion: Andrea Serge and Emmanuel Levinas’, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary film, vol. 15, no. 2, 2017, 191-207. 12. For Merleau-Ponty, painters help us see the world anew.
As Merleau-Ponty puts it, ‘The painter’s vision is an ongoing birth’ (‘Eye and Mind’, CAR 459). Explain the sense in which painting renews our perception of the world. Johnson, Galen, ed., The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, trans. Michael 9Smith, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1993. [This is not online, but is available at the library]. Johnson, Galen, ‘Art after the Sublime in Merleau-Ponty and André Breton: Aesthetics and the Politics of Mad Love’, in Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, ed. Emmanuel Alloa, Albany: State University of New York, 2009, pp. 221-251.
Foti, Veronique, Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty: aesthetics, philosophy of biology, ontology, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2013. 13. Lacan’s mirror stage has been used as a reference point for film studies. Explain its significance for film theory. Baudry, Jean-Louis, ‘Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus’, Film Theory: Introductory readings, fourth edition, ed. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen and Leo Braudy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 302-312. Copjec, Joan, ‘The Orthospychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan’, October, vol. 49, 1989: 53-71. Metz, Christian, From The Imaginary Signifier, Film Theory: Introductory readings, fourth edition, ed. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen and Leo Braudy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 730- 745.
Neroni, Hilary, ‘Following the Impossible Road to Female Passion: Psychoanalysis, the Mundane, and the Films of Jane Campion’, Discourse, vol. 34, nos. 2-3, 2012: 290-310. Mari Ruti, ‘Reading Lacan as a social critic: what it means not to cede on one’s desire’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol 17, no. 1, 2012: 69-81.
Tyrer, Ben, Out of the Past: Lacan and Film Noir, Stockholm: Springer/Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 14. Kristeva’s understanding of the abject departs from Lacan in certain ways, emphasizing the infant’s semiotic rejection of the maternal as abject as paradigmatic. Critics have taken up abjection in relation to art, film, and literature.
Discuss how Kristeva’s understanding of abjection can be a productive mode of interpretation. [You might choose to discuss Kristeva in relation to a particular film, artist or novel, for example.] Ablett, Sarah, ‘Approaching Abjection in Sarah Kane’s Blasted’, Performance Research, 19:1, 2014: 63-71. Margaroni, Maria, ‘Jane Campion’s Selling of the Mother/Land: The Crisis of the Postcolonial Subject’, Camera Obscura, vol. 18, no. 2, 2003: 93-123. Tyler, Imogen, ‘Against Abjection’, Feminist Theory, vol 10, no.1, 2009: 77-98. 15.
In what sense might Wynter be said to recuperate the abject monstrosity of Caliban? Chamberlin, Christopher, Discourse, vol. 41, no. 1, winter 2019: 142-162 (review).
Brinda Charry, The Tempest: Language and Writing, Bloomsbury, London, 2015’ Jonathan Goldberg, Tempest in the Caribbean, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2004.