Reading and Discussion Schedule for Queer Theory, Visuality & Sexuality Graduate Seminar: “Scenes of Exposure”

5 January 2011

Lecture: Hides, Knots & Other Frayed Edges: Sex & Ethics in the Classroom

12 January

Philosophy on the Scene I

• Aristotle, Poetics, in, The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon, The Modern Library, 2001, pp. 1454-1487.
• Jean-Luc Nancy & Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Scene: an exchange of letters” in Beyond Representation: philosophy and poetic imagination, edited by Richard Elridge, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 273-301.
• Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Stagings of Mimesis: an interview,” Angelaki, volume 8, number 2, August 2003, pp. 55-72.
• Jacques Derrida, “The Theorem and the Theater,” and “The Supplement of (at) The Origin“ in Of Grammatology, Johns Hopkins, (1967/1976), pp. 302-316.
• Additional Reading: Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “The Scene is Primal” in The Subject of Philosophy, pp. 99-115.

19 January

Theatrum Philosophicum

• Walter Benjamin, “The Right to Use Force” (1921), and “Critique of Violence” (1921) in Selected Writings, volume 1, Harvard, 1996, pp. 231-234 and 236-252.
• Jacques Derrida, “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’” in Acts of Religion, Routledge, 2002, pp. 230-298.
• Nancy, “L’Intrus,” CR: The New Centennial Review, volume 2, number 3, pp. 1-14.
• Additional Readings:
• Antonin Artaud, “Theater of Cruelty.” and “Here-lies,” in Selected Writings, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1976, pp. 242-239, and 540-551.
• Jacques Derrida, “La parole soufflé,” and “Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation” in Writing and Difference, University of Chicago, 1978, pp. 169-195, and 232-250.

26 January

Camp/Ground (cruising, intrusion) (Bio-political)

• Tim Dean, Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking, University of Chicago, 2009.
• Guy Hocquenghem, The Screwball Asses, Semiotext(e), 2010.
• Michel Foucault, “Lives of Infamous Men” in Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954-1984, volume 3, Power, The New Press, 2000, pp. 157-175.
• Additional Readings:
• Dorian Stuber, “Patient Zero? Illness and Vulnerability in Todd Haynes’ [Safe],” Parallax, volume 11, number 2, April-June 2005, pp. 81-92.
• Ricco, The Logic of the Lure, University of Chicago, 2002.

2 February

Primal (drive, pleasure, death, bed, bedroom) (Psychological)

• Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905).
• Jean-Luc Nancy, “In Statu Nascendi” in The Birth to Presence, Stanford University, 1993, pp. 211-233.
• Maurice Blanchot (A primal scene?) in The Writing of the Disaster, University of Nebraska, (1980/1986), p. 72.
• Lee Edelman, “The Future is Kid Stuff” in No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Duke University, 2004, pp. 1-31.
• Tim Dean, “An Impossible Embrace: Queerness, Futurity, and the Death Drive” in A Time for the Humanities: Futurity and the Limits of Autonomy, edited by Bono, Dean and Ziarek, Fordham University, 2008, pp. 122-140.

9 February: CLASS WILL NOT MEET THIS WEEK DUE TO CAA CONFERENCE IN NYC

16 February

Things (commodity, fetish, exchange, offering, sharing) (Political Economy)

• Mario Perniola, The Sex Appeal of Inorganic, Continuum, (2000/2004).
• Karl Marx, Collected Works, volume 1 (and 36).
• Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Insufficiency of ‘Values’ and Necessity of ‘Sense’” in Journal for Cultural Research, volume 9, number 4, October 2005. Pp. 437-441.
• Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Two Secrets of the Fetish” in Diacritics, volume 31, number 2, Summer 2001, pp. 3-8.
• Additional Reading: William Haver, “Really Bad Infinites: Queer’s Honour and the Pornographic Life” in Parallax, volume 5, number 4, 1999, pp. 9-21.

23 February: NO CLASS, READING WEEK

2 March

Primal (body, around) (Psyche)

• Jean-Luc Nancy, “Psyche,” in The Birth to Presence, Stanford University, 1993, p. 393.
• Jean-Luc Nancy, Corpus, Fordham University, (2006/2008).

9 March

Emptying (loss, withdrawal, finitude) (A-Theology)

• Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981.
• Jean-Luc Nancy, “An Exempting from Sense,” in Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity, Fordham University, 2008.

16 March

Emptying (writing, erasing, arche-violence, shared finitude) (Aporetic Aesthetics)

• Jacques Derrida, “Freud and the Scene of Writing,” in Writing and Difference, University of Chicago, 1978, pp. 196-231.
• Ricco, “Name No One Man,” in Parallax, volume 11, number 2, April-June 2005, pp. 93-103.

23 March

Preparation for the Colloquium

30 March

Graduate Student Colloquium on Queer Visuality, Sexuality and Theory

Department of Visual Studies, UTM

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Tim Dean, Humanities Institute and Department of English, University at Buffalo, NY.