Course Schedule and Catalog

Department: French Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 3

Description: CONTEMPORARY FRENCH THOUGHT: TOWARD A SYMBOLIC ECONOMY ***** Exploration of the idea of a "symbolic economy" that widens and transforms notions of production, exchange, and consumption in anthropology, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and literature. Includes Mauss and Levi-Strauss (on "exchange of goods", "exchange of words", and "exchange of women"), later developments of Bataille, Lacan, Baudrillard, Irigaray, and others, and the theory and practice of "economic criticism" (e.g., Balzac, Zola, Gide, and others).