996011 Limiting Textuality (BS) (WiSe 2014/2015)

The attitude brought in by the linguistic turn and “postmodernism” as well as their general focus on language and textuality have lately been challenged by a strong counter-reaction within cultural theorizing. The relativism and “anything goes” conclusions that vocal opponents have long read them to imply often form the core target of counter-arguments. The purpose of this seminar is to rehearse the actual claims made on behalf of a “textualist" approach and to discuss some of the central arguments of the critics. Even in the current intellectual milieu of rejecting textualism, it seems that discussions continue to run at cross-purposes and respective arguments largely speak past each other.

The core aim of the seminar is not to follow currently popular and sweeping calls for moving beyond a focus on “language” and simplistically dismiss textualism but to arrive at a balanced reading that would reveal its inherent and often common-sense limits. These limits are investigated mainly on two fronts, namely those of discursivity and the relationship between embodiment and writing. Focus is on a few short texts from both proponents and critics of textualist thinking broadly conceived. These readings represent a broad range of traditions, including analytic philosophy, theory of history, literary theory, linguistics, existential phenomenology and poststructuralism. The choice of reading eclectically will hopefully facilitate a comprehensive discussion of the core problems.

The seminar will be carried out as a block seminar on Thursday and Friday November 27-28, with an emphasis on discussion and brief and informal presentations of the key texts by participants themselves. To this end, those wishing to attend the course are asked to be in touch with Kalle Pihlainen (BGHS room B2-238, kalle.pihlainen@abo.fi) by Thursday November 20th in order to agree which focus text they will introduce as well as for suggestions on supplementary reading. Participants are expected to read all of the focus texts with care before the seminar meetings.

Bibliography

Focus texts:

Jenkins, Keith: "‘Nobody does it better’: Radical history and Hayden White." Rethinking History 12:1 (2008).
Carr, David: "Narrative and the real world: An argument for continuity." History and Theory 25:2 (1986).
Putnam, Hilary: chapter 2 ("The entanglement of fact and value”) from The collapse of the fact/value dichotomy and other essays (2002).
Fish, Stanley: chapter 2 (“With the compliments of the author”) from Doing what comes naturally (1989).
Barthes, Roland: first 27 pages (fragments A through F) from Pleasure of the text (trans. Richard Miller, 1972).
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: chapter 6 ("The body as expression, and speech") from part 1 of Phenomenology of perception (trans. 1958).
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson: chapter 3 (“The embodied mind”) from Philosophy in the flesh (1999).