New School for Social Research
Philosophy Department
Spring Semester 2011
GPHI 6109A
On the Tragic and its Limits
Simon Critchley & Judith Butler
Johnson/Kaplan Building, 66 West 12th Street,
Lecture Hall, Room 404
Thursdays 3.00-5.50 p.m.
Back-up classes with Charles Snyder & Alina Vaisfeld
TBA
Texts will be made available on box.net group
http://www.box.net/files/0/f/61030328/On_the_Tragic_and_its_Limits
Schedule:
1. Jan 27 (SC) Rationale for the lecture course – the invention of Attic
tragedy (Vernant & Vidal Naquet) – General remarks on Greek
theatre - the question of the foreigner, the feminine and war in
tragedy – tragedy as the ability to bear moral ambiguity – tragic
consciousness and not knowing what to do.
2. Feb 3 (SC) What is the problem to which Plato is responding in the
Republic? First theoretical and theatrical responses to tragedy:
Gorgias and Aristophanes’ ‘The Frogs’ - the problem of illusion or
tragic fiction - the problem of grief and lamentation in tragedy - Plato,
Republic Books 2-3 & 10, and discussion of the central images of
Republic (Sun, Line, Cave).
3. Feb 10 (SC) Aristotle, Poetics – what sort of reasoning is at work in
the Poetics – what is his view of catharsis? - Aeschylus, Oresteia – a
dialectical reading and that which resists it – the figure of Cassandra
(Christa Wolf).
4. Feb 17 (JB) Sophocles, Antigone, the relation between grief, rage
and the problem of the law (cf. Wilmer and Zukauskaite, Interrogating
Antigone in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism).
5. Feb 24 (SC) Sophocles, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at
Colonus. - The problem of Euripides (Anne Carson on Euripides and
Nietzsche on The Bacchae)
6. Mar 3 (JB) Lacan, selections from Seminar VII, The Ethics of
Psychoanalysis; Irigaray, “The Eternal Irony of Community” and
“Between Myth and History”; Nicole Loraux, Mothers in Mourning and
Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman - Does community overcome
violence or require it? - How do women factor into this problem as
both necessary and excluded?
7. Mar 10 (JB) Aeschylus, Agamemnon; Freud, Civilization and its
Discontents, Chapter VII (justice and revenge); Melanie Klein and
Joan Riviere, Love, Hate, and Reparation. What is the difference
between justice and revenge, and does the distinction hold?
8. Mar 17 Spring Break
9. Mar 24 (SC) Hegel, Aesthetics – art as the sensuous presentation
of the absolute – art as subordinate to philosophy – art as a thing of
the past – the place of drama in Hegel’s philosophy of art – the nature
of tragedy, ancient and modern – the overcoming of tragedy in
comedy and the passage to philosophy as the prose of thought.
10. Mar 31 (SC) The Tragical Sublime – Longinus, Schelling and
Hölderlin - the sublime and the monstrous – union with the god,
separation and disgust – discussion of Aeschylus’ Prometheus
Bound, Hölderlin, The Death of Empedocles, and Ibsen’s John
Gabriel Borkman.
11. Apr 7 (SC) Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy I – Heidegger’s
interpretation of Nietzsche – Heidegger’s interpretation of the
Antigone.
12. Apr 14 (JB) Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy II – ‘Attempt at SelfCriticism’ – The distrust of the Dionysian in the early formulation –
implications for thinking about the terror and sublimity of war. Is war a
form of seduction?
13. Apr 21 (JB) Tragedy, minoritization, and urban kinship: screening
of two films beforehand: “Strella” – a contemporary Greek film on
transgender and Sophocles, plus discussion; and “Black Orpheus”
1959 Brazilian film, drawing on Euripides, directed by Marcel Camus;
discussion. What happens when tragedy is replayed in light of new
political and social forms of kinship and relationality? What is lost and
what is gained? Can tragedy become historical?
14. Apr 28 (SC) Racine, Phaedra – the problematic of desire – Ibsen,
Hedda Gabler and Ghosts – Lethargy, impossibility, conscience, guilt
– ‘Life isn’t tragic, it’s ridiculous and that is what cannot be borne’ –
perhaps even a mention of Beckett.
15. May 5 (JB) No class – The Anarchist Hypothesis conference will
be running throughout May 5-6. Speakers include Judith Butler,
Miguel Abensour, Todd May, members of the accused from Tarnac
and many others.
16. May 12 (SC, with Jamieson Webster) Shakespeare, Hamlet –
The problem of nothing in Hamlet or Hamlet’s nihilism - Lacan on
Hamlet (this coincides with a screening and discussion of different
cinematic versions of Hamlet at the New York Psychoanalytic Instiute
on May 13th) – Carl Schmitt on Hamlet – brief discussion of
Benjamin’s Trauerspiel and the problem of tragedy and history.