THE ABRAHAMIC

Jean-Luc Godard, Notre Musique (2004)

CSLC 503 – Introduction to Comparative Studies in Culture Thursdays, 1 – 3:50 pm, TCC 434 / THH 170 (see course schedule below for room assignments)

Olivia C. Harrison [email protected] 213.740.0104 Office hours: THH 153, Thursday 11am – 12pm & by appointment

Course description

The latter half of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries have seen the steady rise of scholarly interest in religion, linked to distinct yet interrelated historical developments: the destruction of European Jewry and the crisis of European universalism it entailed; the emergence of Jewish nationalism in Europe, the establishment of the state of Israel in mandate Palestine and the ensuing conflict between Israel on the one hand and Arab states and Palestinian subjects (both Christian and Muslim) on the other; the colonial classification of colonized subjects into ethnic-religious categories (in particular in Algeria); anti-colonial struggles waged under the banner of Islam; the emergence of

1 Islamic reform movements and political Islam in the postcolonial period, culminating in the Iranian Islamic Revolution; the rise and progressive normalization of Islamophobic political parties in post-prosperity Europe; the so-called re-Islamization of Muslim minorities in Europe; and, in the post-9/11 era, a global war on terror waged against an ill-defined jihadism, from Afghanistan to Mali. In the past decade, scholars in the humanities and social sciences have challenged the Eurocentric opposition between religion and secularism, interrogating the universalist pretenses of laïcité and excavating the theologico-political underpinnings of Western thought, and countering the claim that contemporary political Islam constitutes a simple return to tradition. This seminar approaches the religion/secularism debate through the lens of what Jacques Derrida and other philosophers have named “the Abrahamic,” with reference to the prophet of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, seen as the father of the three monotheistic faiths. The name Abraham marks an alliance that seeks to undo the opposition between a post-Christian, modern, secular Europe—often hyphenated, quite literally, with Judaism—and an Islamic world mired in tradition, or even fundamentalism. It also harkens to millennial relations between Muslims and Jews, which, though not always amicable, were definitively severed by European colonialism and Zionism. In this sense the Abrahamic is a utopian and nostalgic term, which simultaneously performs critical historiographic work and places a wager on the future of Jewish-Muslim- Christian relations. We begin our genealogy of the Abrahamic with a brief presentation of the religion/secularism debate that has reverberated throughout the public sphere and the academy in past decades, before investigating the emergence of the disciplines of comparative philology and religion in the mid-18th to 19th centuries. We will then undertake a series of close readings of more recent psychoanalytic, philosophical, and literary texts that grapple in highly diverse ways with the Abrahamic in an attempt to understand what this term might signify and what it does to habitual modes of apprehending “culture” and “religion.” Though theme-driven, this seminar is designed as an exercise in the comparative study of “culture,” a category we will critically interrogate alongside those of ethnicity, race, religion, secularism, laïcité, modernity, and tradition. It should be stated from the outset that our goal is not to compare discrete sociocultural groups and literatures, the longstanding aim of the discipline now known as comparative literature (and its older avatars, comparative philology and comparative religion.) With a critical eye to the formation and institutionalization of the humanities and social science disciplines whose object is “culture,” we will seek to understand the historical and epistemic modalities that have shaped and that continue to inform the study of the non-Western world, focusing on the positing of a neat distinction between the secular and the religious. Finally, you will note that most texts on the syllabus are translations, mostly from French but also from Arabic, Hebrew, German, and Italian. I highly encourage those of you familiar with these languages to find the texts in the original, and to alert the class to whatever problems of translation you may notice. It goes without saying that the study of other “cultures” is mediated, among many other things, by the specificities and historicity of language.

2 Required texts (available at the USC Bookstore; please allow time for delivery if purchasing online)

Anidjar, Gil. The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. Bennington, Geoffrey and Jacques Derrida. Jacques Derrida. Trans Bennington. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1993. Cixous, Hélène. So Close. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2009. Freud, Sigmund. Moses and Monotheism. Trans. Katherine Jones. Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino, 2010. Memmi, Albert. The Pillar of Salt. Trans Edouard Roditi. Boston: Beacon, 1992. Said, Edward. Freud and the Non-European. London: Verso, 2003. Sansal, Boualem. The German Mujahid. Trans. Frank Wynne. New York: Europa, 2009. Shammas, Anton. Arabesques. Trans. Vivian Eden. Berkeley: U California P, 2001

All other required texts are available via electronic reserves (ARES). Films are available at the reserves desk at Leavey and are to be viewed before class.

Optional readings are listed alongside mandatory readings below, and are available via ARES or at the reserves desk.

Student responsibilities

Participation and blog posts. This seminar will be the fruit of your collaboration and exchange inside and outside of the classroom. In order to foster discussion I have set up a course blog, on which you will post a response to assigned readings (1-3 paragraphs) the day before class. Please read other students’ responses in advance of our class session and come prepared to discuss the readings and blog posts. I encourage you to post relevant materials you may find outside of class (articles, websites, blogs…) as long as they do not violate the rules of netiquette.

Oral presentation. Each student will present one of the assigned texts or films during the course of the semester. Presentations should take the form of a 20-30 minute lecture for an upper-level undergraduate class. You should not summarize the reading; focus instead on key discussion points, provide context, and clarify difficult passages. Your presentation should also offer avenues for further investigations to be pursued in class discussion.

Papers. Students will write one midterm paper (5-7 pp.) consisting in a close reading of one or several assigned texts and/or films, and one final research paper (15-20 pp.) You may use texts you have presented on or written about during the semester for the research paper, as long as it is clear you are doing new work rather than simply expanding previous arguments. The research paper should be interdisciplinary and comparative in ways we will discuss in class. Your close reading, however, need not be.

Absence and lateness policy. You are allowed one unexcused absence during the semester (three late arrivals count as one absence.) Please contact me as soon as possible

3 about any foreseeable absences (for an academic conference, for example.) In the event of illness or emergency, please notify me as soon as possible and provide me with an official record (medical note or other.)

Composition of final grade

Class participation 10% Weekly blog posts 10% Oral presentation 20% Midterm paper 20% Research paper 30%

Students with disabilities Any student requesting academic accommodations based on a disability is required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP. Please be sure the letter is delivered to me as early in the semester as possible. DSP is located in STU 301 and is open 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. The phone number for DSP is (213) 740-0776.

Academic integrity USC seeks to maintain an optimal learning environment. General principles of academic honesty include the concept of respect for the intellectual property of others, the expectation that individual work will be submitted unless otherwise allowed by an instructor, and the obligations both to protect one’s own academic work from misuse by others as well as to avoid using another’s work as one’s own. All students are expected to understand and abide by these principles. Scampus, the Student Guidebook, contains the Student Conduct Code in Section 11.00, while the recommended sanctions are located in Appendix A: http://www.usc.edu/dept/publications/SCAMPUS/gov/. Students will be referred to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards for further review, should there be any suspicion of academic dishonesty. The Review process can be found at: http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/SJACS/.

Seminar meetings

Week 1 – 8/29 [THH 170] Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular (Chapter 1) Optional reading: Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions; Gil Anidjar, Semites (Chapter 1); Asad, Formations of the Secular (Intro)

Week 2 – 9/5 Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise (Chapters 1 and 4) Edward Said, Orientalism (excerpt from Chapter 2) Optional reading: Ernest Renan, Histoire générale et système comparé des langues sémitiques (Chapter 1); Sathis Gourgouris, Dream Nation (Chapter 4)

4 Week 3 – 9/12 Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism

Week 4 – 9/19 Edward Said, Freud and the Non-European Fethi Benslama, Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam (Chapter 2)

Week 5 – 9/26 [THH 170] Jacques Derrida, “Circumfession” in Jacques Derrida Optional reading: Derrida, The Monolingualism of the Other

Week 6 – 10/3 Derrida, “Avowing—The Impossible” Joseph Massad, “Forget Semitism!” Optional reading: Derrida, “Abraham, the Other”; Anidjar and Derrida, Acts of Religion

Week 7 – 10/10 [THH 170] Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab (Intro and Part I) Film: Jean-Luc Godard, Notre musique

Week 8 – 10/17 Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab (Part II) Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz (Chapter 2)

Week 9 – 10/24 Midterm paper due Hélène Cixous, So Close Optional reading: “Pieds nus” (“Bare Feet” in An Algerian Childhood); “My Algeriance”; “Letter to Zohra Drif”

Week 10 – 10/31 Albert Memmi, The Pillar of Salt Optional reading: Memmi, Jews and Arabs

Week 11 – 11/7 Edmond Amran El Maleh, A Thousand Years, One Day (excerpt) Gil Hochberg, In Spite of Partition (introduction and Chapter 1) Optional reading: El Maleh, Mille ans, un jour

Week 12 – 11/14 Boualem Sansal, The German Mujahid Optional reading: Elias Khoury, Gate of the Sun

Week 13 – 11/21 Judith Butler, Parting Ways (introduction and Chapter 5) Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings (selected essays) Optional reading: Jean Genet, “Quatre heures à Chatila”; Genet, Prisoner of Love

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Week 14 – Thanksgiving break (no class)

Week 15 – 12/5 Anton Shammas, Arabesques Udi Aloni et al, What Does a Jew Want (excerpts) Film: Udi Aloni, Local Angel

12/12 Final paper due

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