Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Synopsis Negativity has been a durable theme of modern thought and writing, and in recent years it has become of considerable structural interest. The notion is variously defined, usually with reference to one or more of philosophy, psychoanalysis and theology. When brought into literary studies, it assumes a wide range of guises: difference, interpretation, nothingness, reading, repression, the unsayable and writing. This subject seeks to analyse `negativity' in the work of two modern writers - Franz Kafka and Maurice Blanchot - with the help of a range of critical theorists, including Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Harold Bloom, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva.
Assessment Two essays (3000 words each): 50% each