Literary and Cultural Theory, 2013-2014
Assessed Essay Questions (2500 words)
2nd paper
Answer ONE of the following questions. Please note that essays are due on 29th April
(Tuesday of Week 2, Term 3).
1. “The moment in the work of art by which it transcends reality cannot, indeed, be
severed from style; that moment, however, does not consist in achieved harmony, in
the questionable unity of form and content, inner and outer, individual and society,
but in those traits in which the discrepancy emerges, in the necessary failure of the
passionate striving for identity. Instead of exposing itself to this failure, in which the
style of the great work of art has always negated itself, the inferior work has relied
on its similarity to others, the surrogate of identity. The culture industry has finally
posited this imitation as absolute. Being nothing other than style, it divulges style’s
secret: obedience to social hierarchy” (Adorno and Horkheimer, “The Culture
Industry”, p. 103-04). Attempt a close reading of this passage, explaining its terms
and drawing out its meaning and implications.
2. Write an essay that explores contemporary debates on climate change, analysing
these through the different conceptual frameworks provided by Moore and
Chakrabarty.
3. “The question ‘what is . . . ?’ is the question – the metaphysical question – to which
the feminine does not allow itself to submit” (Irigaray, “Questions”, p. 122). Discuss
and critically evaluate the theoretical project encapsulated in this rejoinder from
Irigaray to the question “What is a woman?”
4. “Today, what is called postmodernity articulates the symptomatology of yet another
stage of abstraction, qualitatively and structurally distinct from the previous one,
which I have drawn on Arrighi to characterize as our own moment of finance
capitalism” (Jameson, “Culture and Finance Capital, p. 252). Write an essay that
explores and critically analyses the relationship between financialization and cultural
form.
5. “The very title Distinction serves as a reminder that what is commonly called
distinction, that is, a certain quality of bearing and manners, and most often
considered innate (one speaks of distinction naturelle, ‘natural refinement’), is nothing
other than difference, a gap, a distinctive feature, in short, a relational property existing
only in and through its relation with other properties” (Bourdieu, Practical Reason, 6).
Critically evaluate Bourdieu’s theory of ‘distinction’, assessing its strengths and
weaknesses for an understanding of judgements of ‘taste’.
6. Write an essay that addresses the situation of mass culture today, with reference to at
least one aspect/artefact of new(er) media, by way of assessing the strengths and
limitations of Adorno and Horkheimer’s essay on the “Culture Industry”.
7. “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, p. 8). Discuss the relationship between violence
and temporality as this is presented in the work of Nixon and at least one other of
the theorists we have read this year.
8. In light of the re-charting of literary periods proposed by Patricia Yaeger in the
PMLA journal issue, discuss the relationship between narrative form and the energy
regime of oil, critically analysing specific examples of ‘petro-fictions’.
9. “For the moment, I retain the language of Nature/Society and ‘socio-ecological,’ but
emphasize from the outset that these terms represent the results of an underlying
relation – what I call, following Theophrastus, the oikeios. This signifies the relation
that produces manifold environments and organisms as irreducibly plural
abstractions. To take the Nature/Society binary as a point of departure confuses the
origins of a process with its results.” (Moore, “Ecology, Capital, and the Nature of
Our Times”, p. 114). Discuss the significance of Moore’s use of the concept of the
oikeios and its implications for a theory of historical capitalism.
10. Discuss the difference between the notion of “world” as used in the arguments of
Moretti, Auerbach, and Said. What does this entail for the relation between the world
and literary texts, and for something we might call “world literature”?
11. Write an essay that compares Moretti’s approach to world literature with Auerbach’s
proposal, focusing on their concepts of “distant reading” and “ansatzpunkt.”
Elucidate your argument through an example of a phenomenon in world literary
production today that could be approached by either of their methods. Does world
literature appear in similar terms through both methods?
12. Compare the notion of “culture” as it is developed in any two of the following
theorists: Jameson, Adorno, Williams, and Said.
13. Write an essay that analyses the aesthetic and thematic strategies of Cixous’ Coming
to Writing, exploring it as an attempted realisation of what Irigaray theorises as
“speaking (as) woman.” Be sure to explore both the content of Cixous’s writing, in its
overturning of conventional narratives and myths, as well as the formal attributes of
the text, which exemplify much of what Irigaray suggests.
14. “One of the problems in standard ways of thinking about the crisis is precisely [the]
rationalist divorce between male-coded rational prudence and female-coded ethics,
as if they were separate and non-interacting spheres. This is one of the legacies of
rationalism that resonates strongly in the contemporary organisation of life under
global capitalism, increasingly monological and insulated from corrective feedback.
Rationalist distortions appear especially clearly in the global economic system and its
identification of rationality with egoism, and in the dualism of reason and emotion in
its many variants. The economic rationalist culture of contemporary capitalism
draws on many of the classical rationalist narratives and dualisms of the past, such
as reason/emotion dualism, nuanced to fit new contexts and institutions such as the
commodity form, which requires the splitting of use from respect. Reason/emotion
dualism divorces prudence from ethics, codes the former as rational, and sees the
opposing sphere of ethical and ecological concern as dispensable, mere subjective
sentiment.” (Plumwood, Environmental Culture, 9).
Critically analyse the meaning, significance, and implications of this passage as it
relates to Plumwood’s critique of dualism and rationality.