CMS 390R: Psychoanalysis and Rhetoric Unique: 08355 Office Hours Joshua Gunn Spring 2021 by appointment CMA 7.138 Meets Thurs. 3:30-6:15 p.m. 512-471-3933 Classroom: Online [email protected] Those who have proclaimed the death of psychoanalysis never seem to tire of such pronouncements. Psychoanalytic theory, of course, has a number of explanations for why folks would take such pleasure in death. In this course we will examine those explanations, as well as the rationale for "killing off" certain elements and thinkers of the psychoanalytic tradition (e.g., Freud, drive theory, and so on). More specifically, this course is intended as a broad survey of the various schools of psychoanalysis, the controversies and disagreements among those who claim and jettison psychoanalytic perspectives, and the ways in which psychoanalytic theory has been used in critical practice. Although this course will fail to provide any semblance of mastery, it should help to provide a starting place for further researches should you choose to pursue a psychoanalytically informed criticism or critique. At the very least, this course will help to explain a number of common assumptions behind fashionable contemporary cultural theories (e.g., poststructuralism, posthumanism, postmodernism)—assumptions that are often mistakenly, if not irresponsibly, overlooked by present day rhetorical theorists. As we will see, no contemporary theorist or critic—from Alain Badiou and Judith Butler, to Deleuze and Guattari and Slavoj Žižek—can be appropriately understood without some familiarity with psychoanalysis. REQUIRED TEXTS Stuff You May Have to Buy: Sconce, Jeffrey. The Technical Delusion: Electronics, Power, Insanity (Durham: Duke UP, 2019). ISBN: 9781478001065. Stuff Available as PDFs on Canvas Armstrong, Louise and Whitney Darrow, Jr. A Child’s Guide to Freud (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963). Blanton, Smiley. Diary of My Analysis with Sigmund Freud (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1971). Fairbairn, W.R.D. Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality (New York: Routledge, 1994). Freud, Anna. The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, trans. Cecil Baines (London: Karnac Books, 1993). Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVIII (1920-1922): Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology, and Other Works, trans. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1981). Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. James Strachey (New York: Avon Books, 1965). ISBN: 0380010003. Available as PDF on Canvas, although this is a book you probably should own. Freud, Sigmund. The Freud Reader, edited by Peter Gay (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1989). ISBN: 0393314030. Frosh, Stephen. A Brief Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory (London: Macmillan International, 2019). ISBN: 9780230369306. Available as PDF on Canvas, although this one is worth buying as a reference. Hartmann, Heinz. Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation, trans. David Rapaport (New York: International Universities Press, 1961). Klein, Melanie. The Writings of Melanie Klein, Volume I: Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works (New York: The Free Press, 1975). Klein, Melanie. The Writings of Melanie Klein, Volume III: Envy and Gratitude and Other Works, 1946-1963 (New York: The Free Press, 1975). Mitchell, Juliet. Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis (New York: Basic Books, 2000). ISBN: 0465046088. Seshadri-Crooks, Kalpana. Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race (New York: Routledge, 2000). Van Haute, Philippe. Against Adaptation: Lacan’s “Subversion” of the Subject: A Close Reading (New York: Other Press, 2002). ISBN: 1892746654. RECOMMENDED TEXTS Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1996). ISBN: 0415135230. Available as a PDF on Canvas. Fink, Bruce. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997). ISBN: 0674135369. Available as PDF on Canvas. Greenberg, Jay R. and Stephen A. Mitchell. Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2003). ISBN: 0674629752. Available as PDF on Canvas. Laplanche, J. and J.-B. Pontalis. The Language of Psychoanalysis, trans. Donald Nicholson- Smith. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1973). ISBN: 0393011054. Available as PDF on Canvas. THIS COURSE IS WEB-BASED Owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, this course is almost entirely web-based, which means we do not meet in person, but rather engage entirely through UTs online "Learning Management System" (LMS), which is currently Canvas. The best web browser for this purpose is Google's Chrome. If you are not familiar with Canvas, please spend some time taking the available tutorials available on the Canvas interface. The seminar will meet at its normally scheduled time via Zoom, which you can connect to through Canvas. Please note digital technology always fails at some point! Please routinely back up your work! Each and every time you post something in discussion or annotation, double- check to make sure your post actually appears in Canvas. It is your responsibility to make sure your writing and thinking appear on the screen for everyone. ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING Grades will be determined on the basis of written assignments and participation. Minutes (10 points): For each class, someone will be assigned to take minutes. This person will keep careful track of class discussion, including the concepts and questions raised, and then will present a summary of these minutes at the beginning of the next class. The minutes should be extensive, detailed, and typed, and copies should be distributed to the class via PDF via the "minutes" folder on Canvas (path: Files/minutes). The delivered report, however, should only contain a brief summary of the main subjects and questions asked during the previous class (3-5 minutes). Reading Response (50 points): Once in the semester each enrolled participant will write and deliver a short reading response, followed by questions for class discussion. The assignment is designed to stimulate discussion, but is also intended as a practice conference paper. We will determine who does which response collectively during the first or second meeting. These responses should be typed and composed like a regular essay, and should be approximately 3-5 pages in length (do not, in other words, turn in an outline replete with incomplete sentences and so on). In your responses, you are to first briefly summarize the reading, and then explore one to three issues or concepts that interest you about the reading for the day. You are welcome to use mass-media exemplars (e.g., to show a film clip or play a song clip, etc.). Think of this as a kind of laid-back "conference" presentation. • You are not expected to teach the reading; you only need to highlight the "gist" if the reading is "gistable." I realize that some theorists are tough to summarize, so simply do what you are able to do. There is no right or wrong way to engage readings. • Responses should center on or circle around an issue in the reading that you find interesting and particularly relevant to your academic pursuits outside of class. Boring responses are those in which you are not really engaged; class suffers as a consequence. • Responses obviously composed at the last minute will receive no credit. This is half of your course grade, so please do your best. • Responses are modeled on humanities-style presentations, which means they are not extemporaneous (as is, for example, the norm for social scientists). Readings should be read and must be no longer than 10 minutes long. Typically you can plan on 2-3 minutes per page. Rambling on and on and on from an outline represents poor preparation. • You should end your response with two or three good questions to stimulate class discussion. There's no need for a page of questions; one or two is typically enough. • Copies of your response should be distributed to each class participant, including auditors, before meeting on Zoom. Reading responses can be uploaded as PDFs to the "reading responses" folder in Canvas (path: Files/reading responses). An electronic copy of the response in MS Word should be emailed to Josh prior to or shortly after presentation for feedback. Term Paper (40 points): A 15-20 page paper in which you explore the conceptual dynamics of psychoanalysis in relation to some project you are already working on; alternately, you can write a theoretically oriented paper or a rhetorical criticism using the concepts or the thought of one of the thinkers we have read in class. After the first five weeks of the semester, please speak to or email me and share with me your proposed topic for the term paper. Although it is perfectly acceptable--and encouraged-- that your paper tie into a larger project (e.g., a thesis or dissertation), it must nevertheless demonstrate a relation to the material that we are covering in class in some way. The primary point of the paper is to demonstrate some degree of familiarity with the course content; any pragmatic end is secondary. The due-date for the term paper will be determined by the class. Guidelines for Graded Projects: I assume that all of your work for this course is original and not borrowed, and this is inclusive of using material from past classes (working on a project that spans multiple courses, however, is different). Do not turn in a term paper, for example, which contains large chunks of a previous paper. All of your work should be typed, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, and utilize a 12-point font. Papers should be submitted to Josh via email attachment as a MSWord file (I use MSWord's track changes to make comments). Do not submit PDFs of your final papers. Your work should be grammatically correct and proofread. You must document your work in accord with Chicago Style with footnotes! Papers and reading responses incorrectly documented will not receive feedback; if you do not own a style manual you should purchase one or consult Purdue University’s OWL web pages.