EN2293
UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Summer Examinations 2015
Literary and Cultural Theory – Non-Finalists
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Time allowed:
Two hours
Seen Examination
Answer TWO questions, one from Section A and one from Section B. Do not repeat material
from your answer in Section A in your answer in Section B. You should also not substantially
repeat material submitted for the assessed essays on the module.
Read carefully the instructions on the answer book and make sure that the particulars
required are entered fully on each answer book used.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Section A
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Discuss the presentation of capitalism as a revolutionary force in The Communist
Manifesto.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What does Moretti mean by ‘distant reading’? Why does he see it as being a
necessary complement to ‘close reading’ in literary studies today? Do you agree
with him? Why/Why not?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Discuss the latent tensions and affinities between ‘feminist’ and ‘green’ politics
as Kate Soper discusses them in her chapter, ‘Nature and Sexual Politics’.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------According to Freud, civilization is built on inhibition of two primary instincts:
sexuality (Eros) and aggression (Thanatos). Analyse and evaluate Freud’s claims,
with attention to the relation between ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ sources of
repression.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What are the distinctive features of the social logic associated with incarceration
(the prison system), in Foucault’s presentation in Discipline and Punish?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------‘Something is provided for everyone so that no one can escape; differences are
hammered home and propagated’ (Horkheimer & Adorno, Dialectic of
Enlightenment, p. 97). The emphasis in Adorno’s writing falls more or less
unremittingly on the processes of massification, monopolisation, compulsory
integration from above. But Adorno continues to speak, nevertheless, of
resistance. What meanings can you give to the notion of resistance in his work?
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Continued
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EN2293
Section B
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‘Violence, above all environmental violence, needs to be seen – and deeply
considered – as a contest not only over space, or bodies, or labor, or resources,
but also over time’ (Nixon, Slow Violence). ‘The only historian capable of fanning
the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the
dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious’ (Benjamin, ‘On the
Concept of History’).
Discuss Nixon’s presentation of time and slow violence in light of
Benjamin’s concept of history.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Analyse and evaluate the significance of the concept of ‘world-system’ as it
appears in the arguments of any two theorists you have read this year.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------‘Autobiography practised in the enemy’s language has the texture of fiction’
(Djebar, Fantasia, pp. 216-17). Discuss the politics of language and writing in the
work of Djebar and Cixous.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------‘I propose that we move from the “environmental history of” modernity, to
capitalism “as environmental history”’ (Moore, ‘Ecology, Capital, and the Nature
of Our Times’). Discuss, with reference to Moore and any two other theorists you
have examined this year.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In what ways does the development of media technology reshape the politics of
culture? Discuss, with reference to at least two of the theorists whose work you
have read this year.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To what extent can Adorno and Baudrillard be seen to be drawing, in their work,
on Lukács’s theory of reification?
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