Course Schedule and Catalog

Department: English

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 3

Description: STUDIES IN LITERARY THEORY: SYSTEMS THEORY, POST- STRUCTURALISM, AND POSTMODERNITY ***** This seminar locates itself in the wake of what has often been characterized as the "crisis" of postmodernity and its "incredulity toward metanarratives" (to use Lyotard's phrase). This crisis (if it is one) is anything but merely theoretical, for as Lyotard points out, the traditional philosophical paradigms and the metanarratives they make possible provide the foundation for the political projects of modernity, which base themselves upon "the progressive emancipation of reason and freedom." Our aim will be to explore how systems theory (chiefly in the work of Luhmann and his interpreters) provides a powerful paradigm for thinking through the epistemological dilemmas of self- reference, "relativism," and contingency associated with postmodernity, one that might enable us to construct a genuinely post-humanist theoretical framework more adequate to contemporary ethical and political challenges. We will compare the efforts of systems theory in this connection with those of more well-known theorists associated with post-structuralism (and its inheritors), such as Lacan, Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari, Laclau and Moufffe, Zizek, Haraway, and Butler. A seminar paper, and probably an in- class presentation, will be required. ***** INSTRUCTOR: Wolfe, Cary Repeatable for Credit.