GRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN THEORY, LITERATURE, & CULTURE

SUMMER 2005



COLLOQUIUM IN TLC

Lacanian Theory & Postcoloniality

July 10 & 14, 2005

TLC
Language and the Lacanian Self
Prof. Lucinda Cole  (English)

Seminar I

(July 10 )

Su 1:45 PM

Seminar II

(July 14)

R 1:45 PM

This seminar, whose subject is Jacques Lacan, turns upon the assumption that critical theory is useful only to the extent that it helps us understand ourselves and our being in the world. If we can bring such knowledge to bear on reading or writing, all the better. Focusing on Lacan's theory of self-development, we will first explore
what he calls the "imaginary," "the mirror stage," and the "symbolic," comparing his thought to Freud's. Then we will discuss how two writers--a high romantic and a post-romantic--similary struggled to articulate a notion of the self that is intimately bound to language and its limits.

Required Reading:
John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"
JM Coetzee, *Foe*
Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the 'I' in Psychoanalytic Experience." (In Lacan, *Ecrits: A selection*, Tavistock Publications. Also widely anthologized in college-level
theory texts.)

Recommended Reading:
Philip Hill, *Lacan for Beginners* (London and New York: Writers and Reader Limited).

This class will be an introduction to both colonialism and the perspectives of postcolonialism to help bring together and make meaning of issues and situations that we all encounter. The goal is to understand the dynamics of anti-colonial struggles through oppositional practices and politics. We will briefly touch upon some central ideas of the field: the domination of the West in constructing
an understanding of the rest of the word, the systems of knowledge that still support these constructions. We will read some sections from Robert Young's introduction to post-colonialism and then we will apply these ideas to Jamaica Kincaid's *A Small Place*.

Please bring your questions and enthusiasm to challenge and understand
the dynamics of colonialism through postcolonialism.

Required Reading:
Jamaica Kincaid, *A Small Place* (Farrar, Straus, Giroux).
Robert Young, *Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction* (Oxford)
(the introduction and chapter 1).