Belief and perception
Proposed to be offered next in 1998
Millicent Vladiv-Glover
8 points
* 3 hours per week
* Clayton
Objectives On successful completion of this subject students should have a basic familiarity with the semiotic model of perception, with special emphasis on `belief' and `faith' as functions of this model. Employing the latter as an analytic tool, students will be able to read literary and other cultural texts in a non-linear fashion as semiotic structures which must be deconstructed.
Synopsis The subject will examine the concept of `faith' in the context of the semiotic model of meaning proposed by B A Uspensky, with special reference to the Russian Orthodox thinker, Fr Pavel Florenskey. The problem of representation of reality in literature, art and culture will then be elucidated through this semiotic model. The focus will be on the link between traditional cultural (artistic) concepts, such as the image of Christ, the Mother/Child icons on the one hand, and postmodern metatheoretical concepts, such as `sacrifice' and `violence' on the other.
Assessment second year Written (3500 words): 50%
* Class paper (1500
words): 20%
* Test (1.5 hours): 30%
Assessment third year Written (3500 words): 50%
* Class paper (1000
words): 20%
* Test (1.5 hours): 30%
* Third-year level students will
write essays which require more theoretical reflection and presuppose a wider
reading than essays written by students enrolled at second-year level.
Prescribed texts
Berkeley G Three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous Prometheus Books, 1988
Blanchot M Thomas the Obscure Station Hill, 1988
Bourdieu P The logic of practice Polity Press, 1995
Dostoevsky F The brothers Karamazov Penguin
Eliot T S Four quartets Penguin
Kafka F The trial Penguin
Kis D The encyclopedia of the dead Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1989
Merleau-Ponty M The visible and the invisible Northwestern U P, 1968
Nietzsche F Thus spake Zarathustra Penguin
Uspensky B The semiotics of the Russian icon Peter de Ridder, 1976
Williams B Shame and necessity U California P, 1994
Wittgenstein L On certainty Harper Collins
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