Erring and Desiring.
Vulnerable Bodies, Risked Selves in Contemporary Literature and Film
lit, MA sem, Tuesday 12-14, Room X
Kérchy Anna
Vulnerability signifies a susceptibility to physical and emotional injury, a liability to succumb to temptation, criticism, to a contestation of cultural values, or an engulfment by the environment. It is primarily identified with the threatening destabilization of the safely and illusorily homogenized Cartesian subjectivity, yet its affective investment is also a token of our species’s sensibility, of a human-ist empathy and responsibility; while in the long run vulnerability is an ability guaranteeing empowerment by the mutability of perspectives allowing for solidarity. Returning to the etymological roots of word vulnerability: “wounding” we shall examine fictional representations of embodied experiences of traumatizing identity crisis and therapeutical risk management focusing on experiences of falling in love, becoming lost, letting go, becoming ill, erring in cyberspace, being dead. The desiring, decaying, aging, monstrous, mourning, technologically modified body, self and text shall be at center of our attention. The reading list includes short stories including Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain”, Lee Lynch’s “Cactus Love”, Brian Aldiss’ “Super Toys Last All Summer Long”, Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”, Yann Martell’s “The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios”, and slim novels: Jeanette Winterson’s The Powerbook, Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke, Stephen King’s The Body, Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist, films shown in separate sessions and discussed in class: Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, or Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin or Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise/ Before Sunset. (Hanif Kureishi’s “The Body”, Philip Roth’s The Breast,)
- (8.9) Orientation. Leonard Cohen. “Hallelujah”
- (15.9) Annie Proulx. “Brokeback Mountain” (extract: Michael Cunningham. At Home at the End of the World)
- (22.9) Lee Lynch. “Cactus Love”
- (29.9) Yann Martel. “The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios”
- (6.10) Gregg Araki. Mysterious Skin or Gus Van Sant. My Own Private Idaho
- 6. (13.10) Jeanette Winterson. The Powerbook
- (20.10) Brian Aldiss. “Super Toys Last All Summer Long”, Donna Haraway. “Cyborg Manifesto”
- (3.11) Chuck Palahniuk Choke
- (10.11) Ian McEwan: “HomeMade”, DH Lawrence “Second Best”
10. (17.11) Stephen King. The Body
11. (24.11) Richard Linklater. Before Sunrise/ Before Sunset or M. Mayer. At Home at the End of the World
12. (1.12) Don DeLillo. The Body Artist
13. (8.12) Conclusions
Grading policy: presentations, participation (25%), take-home paper (25%), final assignment (50%)
