SPN 305:
Introducción a Estudios Literarios -Otoño 2014
Hoja de
Trabajo: 1. ¿Qué es
Teoría?
Lectura
de temas teóricos:
Mencione
las ideas principales del tema
Ofrezca
su comentario sobre este tema
(1) Theory
is a bunch (of mostly foreign names); it means Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucalt,
Luce Irigaray, Jacques Lacan, Judith Butler, Louis Althusser, Gayatri Spivak,
for instance. 2
(2) A
theory must be more than a hypothesis; it can’t be obvious; it involves complex
relations of a systematic kind among a number of factors; and it is not easily
confirmed or disproved. 3
(3) Theory:
designates works that succeed in challenging and reorienting thinking in fields
other than to which they apparently belong. This is the simplest explanation of
what makes something count as theory. Works regarded as theory have effects
beyond their original field. 3
(4) The
genre of ‘theory’ includes works of anthropology, art history, film studies,
linguistics, philosophy, political theory, psychoanalysis, science studies,
social and intellectual history, and sociology. 4
(5) The
main effect of theory is the disputing of ‘common sense’ views about meaning,
writing, literature, experience. For example, theory questions:
· The
conception that meaning of the an utterance or text is what the speaker ‘had in
mind’,
· Or the idea
that writing is an expression whose truth lies elsewhere, in an experience or a
state of affairs which it expresses,
· Or the
notion that reality is what is ‘present’ at a given moment. 4
(6)
Example 1: French intellectual historian Michel Foucalt on ‘sex’. For
Foucalt, ‘sex’ is constructed linked with various social practices and
institutions: the way in which doctors, clergy, public officials, social workers,
and even novelists treat phenomena they identity as sexual..Foucalt’s analysis
treats sex as an effect rather than a cause, the product of discourses which
attempt to analyze, describe and regulate the activities of human beings. 7
· An
illustration of the way sex was made the secret of the individual’s being, a
key of the individual’s identity, is the creation of the nineteenth century of
‘the homosexual; as a type, almost a species.
· What we
think we know about the world –the conceptual framework in which we are brought
to think about the world-exercises great power. Power/knowledge has produced,
for example, the situation in which you are defined by your sex. 8
(7)
Example 2: Derrida’s on Rousseau’s texts: our common sense of reality as
something present, and of the original as something was present, proves
untenable: experience is always mediated by signs and the ‘original’ is
produced as an effect of signs. of supplements.
(8)
So what is theory”
· Theory is
interdisciplinary – discourse with effects outside an original discipline.
· Theory is
analytical and speculative – an attempt to work out what is involved in what we
call sex or language or writing or meaning of the subject.
· Theory is a
critique of common sense, of concepts taken as natural.
· Theory is
reflexive, thinking about thinking, enquiry about the categories we use of
making sense of things, in literature and other discursive practices.
Comentarios:
(1) Los análisis de teóricos como
Foucalt y Derrida permiten deconstruir nociones que tienen significados que
parten de poder, conocimiento y experiencias en la escritura del sujeto.
Generalmente los teóricos son de origen europeo y han trabajado en otra lengua
que no es el inglés.
(2) Es importante destacar que no hay
nada concreto con la teoría que ha servido para analizar textos literarios. Sin
embargo, las ideas teóricas han servido a esclarecer temas como el sexo y la
experiencia.
(3) Comentarios de clase???
(4) Literary
terms: Bildungsroman, novel, narrator, prose
Materiales en Youtube
Introduction to Literary Theory
Brooke Dean
Literary Theory Demistified
Dr. Lawrence J. Clark explains and demystifiies the
origin and major concepts of 20th Century Literary Criticism. Dr. Clark begins
with Plato and Aristotle, then moves forward to Sarejit, M. H. Abrams, and
literary theories such as formalism, new criticism, feminism, marxism, new
historicism, etc.This is an excellent resource for anyone, whether student,
professor, or layperson, who has previously found these concepts difficult to
grasp.
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