English 633/ Comparative Literature

Charles Bernstein
English 633 / Comparative Literature : Fall 1993
Thursdays 12:30
438 Clemens Hall

The Dialectics of Ideology (or, S/he Do the Police in Voices, Not): Toward a Theory of Ideolect (with special reference to dialogue, the vernacular and the quest for the ordinary).

KEY:: *=required text
TL=available at Talking Leaves
PC=420 Capen
X=xerox packet or handout.

1. (Sept. 2). Introduction

2/3. (Sept. 9 & Sept. 23; no class on 9/16): What Is Ideology?
John Thompson, Studies in Ideology (X)
Louis Althusser, Ideological State Apparatus in Lenin and Philosophy (*TL, R)
V.N. Volisinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (X)
Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory" (X)*
Ferrucio Rossi-Landi, from Language as Work and Play (X)
Thomas Kuhn, from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (X)
Chantall Mouffe, "Hegemony and New Political Subjects" (X)
Simone Weil, from Gravity and Grace (X)
Alan Davies, "Lies" (X)
Recommended:
Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious (TL,R), part 1 Marxism & Form, The Prison House of Language
Further reading:
Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest
Feyerabend, Against Method; Science in a Free Society Baudrillard, Mirror of Production
Evelyn Fox Keller, "Feminism & Science" in Feminist Theory: A Critique of Ideology
Sandra harding, The Science Question in Feminist Theory
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Gramsci, Antonio, A Gramski Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935
Marx

* Try to read Basil Bernstein and Gouldner (reserve) during Rosh Hashona break!

4 (Sept. 30) Language as Social Space
Dell Hymes, "Studying the Interactions of Language and Social Life" (X)
Luce Irigary, "Linguistic Sexes and Gender" (X)
Pierre Bourdieu, "The Production and Reproduction of Legitimate Language" in Language & Symbolic Power (X)
Basil Bernstein, Class, Codes and Control (R) (Ch 8 & 9; optionally, chs 5-7, but esp check out pp. 111-12, 115-16, 134-35
Alvin Goulder, The Future of Intellectuals (R), Chapter 6.
Michel DeCerteau, from The Practice of Everyday Life (X)

5. (Oct. 7) Literature and Ideology
Jerome McGann, Romantic Ideology (*TL, R)
Antony Easthope, Poetry as Discourse (*TL, R)
Ch. Bernstein, "Water Images of the New Yorker (X)
Further reading:
Pierre Machery
Nelson, Cary & Grossberg, Lawrence, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture

6. (October 14). Standard English
Tony Crowley, Standard English & the Politics of Language (*TL, R)
Mad Magazine, "Friends, Romans, Hipsters" (X)
Donne in Standard English (X)
Zukofsky, Cavalcanti translations
Al Cook lecture at 2.

7. (Oct. 21). Bob Perelman visit.
Perelman, Virtual Reality (*TL); cf other Perelman books
Kamau Brathwaite, History of the Voice (*TL, R)
Kamau Brathwaite, from X/Self (out of print: R, PC; selection X)
Recommended:
For more on Brathwaite, see his long poem on the horrendous violence in Jamaica in Hambone #10, and also editor Nathaniel Mackey's interview with Brathwaite a few issues earlier. He has a new book this season from New Directions. Roots U of Mich 1993
Bob Perlman reads Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 4!

8. (Oct. 28): Caribbean Discourses
Derek Walcott (X)
Claude McKay, The Dialect Poetry of Claude McKay (from Songs of Jamaica and Constab (X)
Edouard Glissant, Caribbean Discourse (X, R)
Michael Smith, It A Come (X, R)
Selections from New British Poetry (X)
Lynton Kwesi Johnson (X)
Louise Bennet, Jamaica Labrish (PR6052.E53 J3) (R)
Selected Poems (PR6052.E53 A6 1983) (R)
The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse (*TL): The Oral Tradition, plus McKay, John Figueroa, Brathwaite, Walcott -- "A Far Cry from Africa" and "The Spoiler's Return"
Recommended:
Peter Grieco, "Reading the Poetic Subject in the Works of Claude McKay." Peter, recent UB graduate, will probably sit in on the class; he especially recommends "Two-an'-Six".
Further reading:
The Selected Poems of Claude McKay & his autobiography, A Long Way from Home
^^^Aimee Caesar
Background, not necesarily recommended:
Come Back to Me My Language by J. Edward Chamberlin PN 849 C3 C48 1993

9. (Nov. 4): The Dialects of Modernism (1)
Paul Laurence Dunbar: see the early original collections of Dunbar in PC, e.g. Howdy, Honey, Howdy (1905) and Candle Lightin' Time (1901); (X).
Mary Church Terrell, "Paul Laurence Dunbar" (X)
Sterling Brown, Collected Poems (TL, X; library copies avail)
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on Sterling Brown (X)
James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones (*TL, R)
Langston Hughes, Montage of a Dream Deferred (X, PC), Weary Blues (X), &c.
Countee Cullen, My Soul's High Song (X, R)
Houston Baker, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (*TL, R)

10. (Nov. 11): Dialectics of Modernism (2)
Melvin Tolson, Harlem Gallery (R, PC, selcn X), Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (R,PC, selcn X) -- note Tate intro.
Lorenzo Thomas, "Tolson and Baraka: A Study of Modernism and Afrocentricity" (R)
A.L. Neilson, "Melvin B. Tolson and the Deterritorializatiopn of Modernism" (R)
Ezra Pound, Canto 35 (X)
Louis Zukofsky, Calvalcanti translations (X)
Peter Quatermain, "Our Transported Maiden" (X)
James Clifford, "Introduction," The Predicament of Culture (X) (including Williams's "Elsie")
Thomas S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (X) & "Game of Chess" in The Waste Land (X)
Etheridge Knight, from Born of a Woman (X)
Gwendolyn Brooks (X)
Amiri Baraka, Reggae or Not (PC), etc + "Don Juan in Hell" (X), "It's Nation Time" (X), "Why's/Wise" (X)
Recommended:
Ch. Bernstein, "Time Out of Motion" and "Professing Stein" in A Poetics (R)
Stein, Three Lives and "What Is English Literature" in Lectures in America
Further reading:
Cary Nelson, Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory 1910-1940
Basil Bunting, Briggflats
Hugh MacDiarmid, A Drunk Man Looks at Thistle
Neil Schmitz, Huck and Alice
Zora Neal Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Hurston/Hughs, Mule Bone
Tolson, Rendezvous with America

11. (Nov. 18) Identity
Henry Louis Gates, ed., Race, Writing and Difference (R): Introduction, Todorov reply, Baker reply, Gates reply.
Lucille Clifton, Good Woman (X, R) (esp pp.28, 38-45, 73-90, 112, 121-22, 124, 148, 158)
June Jordan, A Living Room (esp. pp. 66, 88) (PC, X) and On Call (Intro, Chaps 11, 16, 1, 4) (X)
Audre Lord, Chosen Poems (PC) (esp pp. 10, 39, 42, 47, 88, 111)
Veronica Forrest-Thomson, "Cordelia" (X)

12. (Nov. 18): Representation/Reference/Reification/ Refutation--Beyond Identity
Julia Kristeva, from Revolution in Poetic Language (X, R)
Patricia Clark Smith "Ain't Seen You Since" in Paula Gunn Allen (ed), Studies in American Indian Literature (R)
Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop (X); pp.127-38, 146-54, 165-183
Nicole Brossard, Poetic Politics in Bernstein, ed., The Politics of Poetic Form (R)
Hannah Weiner, Clairvoyant Journal (*TL)
Lyn Hejinian, The Cell (recommended at TL, PC) and My Life (PC) "Theses on Grocho Marxism"
Kate Ellis in Socialist Review 89/2 (1989), pp. 37-52 (X)
Leslie Scalapino, "Extinction of Images" (X)
Recommended:
Susan Howe: The Birth-mark, My Emily Dickinson, Europe of Trusts, Melville's Marginalia
Danille Collobert, It Then, tr. Norma Cole Lenny Bruce, Sholem Stein ("Bahama Mama") and Shorty Perterstein interviews (audiotape)
Groucho Marx, A Night at the Opera (etc)

13. (Dec. 2) Ideolect or Idiolect o' An't Youse the Koind Who Telz?
Jean-Jacque LeCercle, The Violence of Language (*TL, R)
Joan Retallack -- Weds at 4 reading 9/22, Errata 5uite (*TL)
Robert Grenier -- What I Believe (X), Phantom Anthems (recommended at TL, PC)
Leslie Scalapino -- Robert Grenier's Scrawl (X)
David Melnick, Pcoet (PC)
Recommended:
Velimir Khlebnikov, "The Word as Such" & "The Letter as Such" in Collected Works, tr. Schmidt, vol. 1; various zaum (or transense) poems in The King of Time, tr. Schmidt.
Further Reading:
Bruce Andrews, Wobbling, Give 'Em Enough Rope, I Don't Have ...
Lynne Dreyer, The White Museum
Larry Eigner, Anything on Its Side, Another time in fragaments
Lyn Hejinian, Writing Is an Aid to Memory, etc
David Melnick, Men in Aida
Jackson Mac Low, Representative Works, Bloomsday, Words nd Ends from Ez, Stanzas for Iris Lezak, etc
Peter Seaton, Crisis Intervention, The Son Master
Abraham Lincoln Gillespie, The Syntactic Revolution
Clark Coolidge, Melancolia, Space, Poloroid, Quartz Hearts, Solution Passage, Sound as Thought
Leslie Scalapino, Considering How Exagerrated Music Is
Tina Darragh, Striking Resemblances
P. Inman, Ocker and Uneven Development
Joe Ceravello, Fits of Dawn
J.H. Prynne, "Kitchen Poems" in Collected Poems
Tom Raworth, Writing and Eternal Sections
Ray DiPalma, visual books in special collections

14 (Dec. 9): Last Class

Required at Talking Leaves for English 633

The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse (0 14-058-511-7)
Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy (Monthly Review Press)
Houston Baker, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
Kamu Brathwaite, History of the Voice (New Beacon 0-901241-455-5)
Tony Crowley, Standard English & the Politics of Language University of Illinois Press (0-252-06082-2)
Antony Easthope, Poetry as Discourse Routledge 0-414-05128-2
James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones Penguin 0 12 01 8403 1
Jean-Jacque LeCercle, The Violence of Language Routledge 0-415-03431-0
Jerome McGann, Romantic Ideology University of Chicago isbn 0-226-55850-9
Bob Perlman, Virtual Reality Roof Books/SPD 0-937804-49-5
Hannah Weiner, Clairvoyant Journal

Recommended:
Sterling Brown, Collected Poems
Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconcsious (a few left dwnstrs, or o/p)
Robert Grenier, Phantom Anthems
Lyn Hejinian, The Cell

Graduate Reserve:
Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy B 4249 L384 A69 1972
Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious
Basil Bernstein, Class, Codes and Control P41 P74 V. 1,2,3
Alvin Goulder, The Future of Intellectuals HM213 G68
Jerome McGann, Romantic Ideology PR 590 M34 1983
Antony Easthope, Poetry as Discourse
Tony Crowley, Standard English & the Politics of Language P368. C78 1989b
Kamu Brathwaite, X/Self PR9230.9. B68 X7 1987
Eduard Glissant, Caribbean Discourse F2081. G5313 1989
Louise Bennet, Jamaica Labrish (PR6052.E53 J3)
Selected Poems (PR6052.E53 A6 1983)
Sterling Brown, Collected Poems (PS3503.R833 A17 1980)
James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones
Houston Baker, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
Melvin Tolson: Harlem Gallery PS 3539.0334 H3
Libretto for the Republic of Liberia PS 3539.0334 H3
Lorenzo Thomas, "Tolson and Baraka: A Study of Modernism and Afrocentricity"
A.L. Neilson, "Melvin B. Tolson and the Deterritorializatiopn of Modernism"
Henry Louis Gates, ed., Race, Writing and Difference PN 56 R18R3 1986
Lucille Clifton, Good Woman
June Jordan, Living Room
Audre Lord, Chosen Poems
Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language (R)
Paula Gunn Allen (ed), Studies in American Indian Literature (R)
Charles Bernstein, ed., The Politics of Poetic Form PN 1042.P65 1990
Charles Bernstein, A Poetics PS3552.E7327 1992
Jean-Jacque LeCercle, The Violence of Language P99.4.P74 L4 1990