TLC 2003

GRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN THEORY, LITERATURE, & CULTURE SUMMER 2004 POSTCOLONIALITY COLLOQUIUM IN TLC Postcoloniality July 30-August 1, 2004
TLC 501--Introduction to Theory, Literature, and Culture, Prof. Dusan Bjelic (Criminology/Honors) Summer Session 2B (July 6-July 30 ) MTW 12:30-3:45 PM	TLC 515--Topics in TLC I: Torture in Western Europe and its Colonies: History, Theory and Literature, Prof. Lucinda Cole (English) Summer Session 1B (May 17-June 11) MTW 6:00-9:15 PM	TLC 525--Topics in TLC II: Postcolonial Ireland in Literature and Film, F.C. McGrath (English) Summer Session 2B (July 6 - July 30) MTW 6:00-9:15 PM

Introduction to Theory, Literature, and Culture is designed to introduce students to questions and concepts that have dominated literary and cultural studies over the past thirty years: questions about language, about history, about the body and its place in the social order. Our primary goal is to examine how contemporary philosophers Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault used the insights of Marx, Nietzsche, and/or Freud to break away from the “modern,” with its largely formalist or structuralist interpretive paradigms, and thus to create the conditions for “postmodernity.” We will thus be reading foundational essays by the above thinkers. “Postmodernism,” of course,” has sometimes been accused by its politically-progressive detractors of being “apolitical” or “politically conservative.” Our secondary goal is to interrogate this perception by focusing on how postmodernist insights have informed contemporary debates about race, ethnicity, and nation. To that end, we will be reading excerpts from, among others, Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, Etienne Balibar, and Homi Bhaba. Students should expect to write weekly papers, to make an oral presentation, and to participate in lively debate.	This course is a broad overview of the history and practice of torture in Western Europe, with emphasis upon three former colonies: America, Algeria, and Ireland. Using Edward Peters’s foundational history as our primary text, we shall begin by examining how trial by ordeal was systematically replaced in all of Western Europe with an "immanent" system of justice whose most striking feature was the confession, whose major instrument was juridically- sanctioned torture, and whose most caricatured practitioner was the Inquisitor. England (and later, the United States) maintained a paradoxical attitude towards this system: on the one hand, it practiced a tradition of common law in which torture was unnecessary, if not illegal, enabling Englishmen to think of their laws as being superior to those of, for example, Spain and France; on the other hand, something known as the "royal prerogative" allowed ruling monarchs and their officials to inflict torture upon English subjects. The result was an oddly unstable system whose paradoxes were only partially addressed by the 17th C. passage of the Bill of Rights. In this historical section, we shall read literary works by, among others, Thomas Kyd (The Spanish Tragedy); John Dryden (Amboyna); and Aphra Behn (Oroonoko, or The History of the Royal Slave). That history is important to understanding the nature of torture in contemporary contexts, the subject of Part Two. Legal torture had all but disappeared in Western Europe by the end of the 18th Century; in 1874 Victor Hugo could write confidently that torture "has ceased to exist." When it does emerge (as in Mussolini’s Italy or Imperial Japan) it is widely regarded as a "barbaric" practice which more "civilized" nations have eradicated or overcome. Yet torture continues to be practiced by democratic countries, particularly in periods of colonization and decolonization, where it is likely to re-emerge as a "defensible" if not legal practice. Beginning with colonial America, we shall examine the trials and punishments of, for example, slaves and "witches;" next we shall turn to French Algeria in which the torture of both French citizens and Algerian subjects was justified by French authorities; finally, we shall return to England, this time focusing upon a 1972 incident involving the IRA. Part III is an investigation of attempts on the part of specialists in different disciplines–history, psychology, and cultural studies-- to theorize the history and practice of torture.	The notion of Ireland as a postcolonial culture is resisted by many in Ireland as well as by many postcolonial critics. Unlike most other colonies and former colonies, Ireland is located geographically and racially within the first world, and, as a member of the European Union and as one of the fastest growing economies in Europe, Ireland is clearly part of the first world. Nonetheless, more than eight centuries of colonization has left Ireland, north and south, with features of a postcolonial legacy that resemble those in other formerly colonized countries. The postcolonial legacy of the Republic of Ireland is abundantly evident in Irish social, political, and cultural institutions. Consequently Ireland’s culture is characterized by first-world as well as postcolonial affinities and structures. This course will examine Ireland’s postcolonial heritage in literature and film. Writers will include Eavan Boland, Seamus Deane, Anne Devlin, Terry Eagleton, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, Frank McGuinness, Stewart Parker, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and J. M. Synge. Films will include Michael Collins, Bloody Sunday, In the Name of the Father, Some Mother’s Son, Mother Ireland, The Magdalene Sisters, Hush-A-Bye Baby, and The Crying Game.