CLS4155

Belief and perception

Millicent Vladiv-Glover

12 points - 3 hours per week - Second semester - Clayton - Prohibitions: SLA4170

Objectives On successful completion of this subject students should have a basic familiarity with a range of models of perception, from late 19th century pragmatism to 20th century psychoanalysis, phenomenology and beyond. Employing these models as analytic tools, students should be able to read critically and deconstructively a variety of artistic and cultural texts. Students will be expected to reflect widely on the implications of these models for research in the humanities.

Synopsis The subject will examine the concept of 'belief' or 'faith' and its derivatives (such as revelation, non-knowledge, negativity) in the context of various theoretical schools which model perception: pragmatism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, philosophy of language, theory of plateaus. There will be some emphasis on the religious-semiotic writings of the Russian philosopher/mathematician, Pavel Florensky. The basic theoretical corpus offered by the course will be used in application to cultural texts for the purpose of deconstructive analyses of, for instance, 'generic' (generative) cultural concepts and images ('sacrifice', 'death', 'Mother-of-God/Child' icons, 'Christ', 'hero', 'whore', 'myth', the 'sacred', etc), but also for the 'reading' (interpretation) of literary works, art or film.

Assessment One seminar paper (1500 words): 20% - Research essay (4500 words): 50% - Examination (3 hours): 30% - Students may choose to convert the 3-hour examination into an additional essay of 3000 words.

Prescribed texts

Blanchot M Thomas the Obscure Station Hill
Deleuze G and Guattari F A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia U Minnesota P
Kafka F The trial Penguin
Kant I Critique of judgement ed./tr. W S Pluhar, Hackett
Kis D The encyclopaedia of the dead Farrar Strauss Giroux
Merleau-Ponty M The visible and the invisible followed by working notes Northwestern U P
Nietzsche F Thus spoke Zarathustra Penguin

Back to the 1999 Arts Handbook