Research Seminar: Production of the Self in the West

This graduate research seminar offers a critical examination of "individualism," the thesis that the rise of the West and the rise of the individual correlate closely with each other. There are a number of different historical, anthropological, literary, and sociological discourses about bodies, memory, conscience, subjectivity, identity, privacy, sexuality, and gender, which have developed separate narratives about the self, often in isolation from one another. The work of the first quarter will be conceptual in nature, and the readings are designed to introduce students to many of the ways the self, person, or individual has been talked about. Some modern feminist theory finds the thesis of individualism irrelevant for women and suggests that the self as a continuing story (autobiography) is gendered. Some theorists counter the creative possibilities of forgetting to a self constructed around a memory core. Multiple selves, schizoid selves, and decentered selves challenge older ideas of identity. The dialectic between public and private throws up new problems about who "owns" the self, its image, and its location. Bodies, sexualities, and desire turn out to be shaped and disciplined within hidden forms of power. Old ideas about the rise of the individual and new ones about pathologies of the self make the self and its history a central issue for contemporary debate.

Each session of the seminar during the Winter Quarter will be divided into two parts. During the first hour-and-a-half, we will discuss a common reading, which will be introduced by one of the participants. The second part will consist of a longer report on an assigned theme, for which a bibliography is suggested. The books for the reading assignments will be available in the campus bookstore. Many of the volumes for reports will be on reserve in the graduate reserve room of the URL. The work of this quarter is designed to introduce students to conceptual issues and to point them in the direction of important research topics. Students will complete a conceptual or theoretical paper by the end of the quarter. Each session of the Spring Quarter will be devoted to discussion of a research paper.

Week 1: January 11

Introduction

Week 2: January 18

Part A: The World-Historical Self

Reading

Michael Carrithers, et al., The Category of the Person

Part B: Theoretical Approaches

Bibliography

Steven Lukes, Individualism

Rudolf zur Lippe, Bürgerliche Subjektivität: Autonomie als Selbstzerstörung

Manfred Frank, Die Unhintergehbarkeit von Individualität

Clifford Geertz, "From the Native's Point of View," in Local Knowledge

Norbert Elias, Die Gesellschaft der Individuen

L. Moulin, "On the Evolution of the Meaning of the Word 'Individualism,'" in International Social Science Bulletin 7 (1955)

W.H. Dray, "Holism and Individualism in History and Social Science," in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. IV, pp. 53-58

H. Dietzel, "Individualismus," in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaft, 4th ed. (1923), vol. V, pp. 408-24

C.B. Mapherson, Political Theory of Possessive Individualism

F. Koehler, Wesen und Bedeutung des Individualismus

Raymond Fogelson, "Person, Self, and Identity: Some Anthropological Retrospects, Circumspects, and Prospects," in Benjamin Lee, ed., Psychosocial Theories of the Self, pp. 67-109

Grace Gredys Harris, "Concepts of Individual, Self, and Person in Description and Analysis," in American Anthropologist 91,3, pp. 599-612

Gregory Bateson, "The Cybernetics of the 'Self': A Theory of Alcoholism," in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, pp. 309-337

Meyer Fortes, "The Structure of the Person among the Tallensi," in G. Dieterlen, ed., La Notion de la personne en Afrique Noire, pp. 283-319

Dalia Judovitz, "Introduction" and "From Self to Subject: Montaigne to Descartes," in Subjectivity and Representation in Descartes, pp. 1-38.

Jakob Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

E. Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society

Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms

Manfred Frank, Gérard Raylet, and Willem van Reijen, eds., Die Frage nach dem Subject

E. Valentin Daniel, Fluid Signs. Being a Person in the Tamil Way

Peter Rivière, Individual and Society in Guiana

Louis Dumont, Essays on Individualism

Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus

André Bétaille, "Individualism and Equality," in Current Anthropology 27 (1986), pp 121-34, and debate 28 (1987), pp. 669-77

R.H. Barnes, et al., Context and Levels

Bernard Williams, "The Idea of Equality," in P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman, Philosophy, Politics and Society, second series

Manfred Frank, Vorlesungen über die neue Mythologie

Week 3: January 25

Part A: A Narrative of the Self

Reading

Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self

Part B: Identity, a Concept for our Times?

Bibliography

Anita Jacobson-Widding, Identity: Personal and Socio-Cultural

Richard Trexler, Persons in Groups

H. Perry Chapman, Rembrandt's Self-Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity

Alois Hahn and Volker Kapp, Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis

P. Benrekassa, Fables de la Personne

Robert Woodrow Langbaum, The Mysteries of Identity

Claude Lévi-Strauss, ed., Identité

Jürgen Habermas, Essay on Identity

Theo van der Meer, "The Persecution of Sodomites in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam: Changing Perceptions of Sodomy," in Journal of Homosexulaity

Georges Denrekassa, Les sujets de l'écriture

Basil Bernstein, Class, Codes and Control

Louis Dumont, "Are Cultures Living Beings?" German Identity in Interaction," in Man, n.s. 21 (1986), pp. 587-604.

Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning

Manfred Sommer, Identität im übergang: Kant

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Bernard Giesen, Nationale und kulturelle Identität!

Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman, eds., Modernity and Identity

Week 4 February 1

Part A: Homo aequalis

Reading

Louis Dumont, From Mandeville to Marx

Part B: Conscience and Internalization

Bibliography

Heinz-Dieter Kittsteiner, Gewissen und Geschichte

Heinz-Dieter Kittsteiner, Die Entstehung des modernen Gewissens

Edmund Leites, ed., Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe

Edmund Leites, Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality

Gerd Oestreich, Neostoicism

Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil

Michael Baylor, Action and Person: Conscience in Late Scholasticism and Young Luther

Jean Duleaumeau, Sin and Fear

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Articles on "Gewissen" in Realencyklopedie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche and J.S. Ersch and J.G. Gruber, Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste

Kenneth Read, "Morality and the Concept of the Person among the Gahuka Gama," in Oceania 25, pp. 233-282.

Clifford Geertz, "Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali, in The Interpretation of Culture, pp. 360-411.

Seyla Benhabit, Situating the Self. Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics

Week 5: February 8

Part A: The Self and Consuming Desire

Reading

Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism

Part B: Public and Private Spheres

Bibliography

Jürgen Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Arlette Farge, Des usages privés de l'espace publique. Le vivre dans le rue

Philippe Ariès, et al., History of Private Life, 4 vols.

Richard Sennett, Fall of Public Man

Olivia Harris, "Households and Their Boundaries," in History Workshop 13 (1982)

Jürgen Schlumbohm, Kinderstuben

Arlette Farge, La vie privée

Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families

Hans Medick, article on "plebeiische Kultur" "Ownership of the Image," in Screen, late 70s

Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung

Week 6: February 15

Part A: Self in Exchange

Reading

Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money

Part B: Representing and Narrating the Body

Bibliography

Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols

Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger

David Armstrong, Political Anatomy of the Body

Yvone Verdier, Façons de dire, façons de faire

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

Michel Foucault, Birth of the Clinic

Dorinda Outram, The Body and the French Revolution

Philippe Perrot, Le travail des apparences

Georges Vigarello, Concepts of Cleanliness Zones, vols. 1-3

Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World

Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender

Barbara Duden, The Woman under the Skin

Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain

Francis Barker, The Tremulous Private Body

Gananath Obeyesekere, Medusa's Hair

Rudolf zur Lippe, Naturbeherrschung am Menschen, vol. 1: Körpererfahrung als Entfaltung von Sinnen und Beziehungen in der Ära des italienischen Kaufmannskapitals; vol. 2: Geometrisierung des Menschen und Representation des Privaten im französischen Absolutismus

D. Kamper and Ch. Wulf, eds., Die Wiederkehr des Körpers

Week 7: February 22

Part A: Self and Other: Boundaries of the Body

Reading

Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, vol. I: The History of Manners

Part B: Sexuality and Identity

Bibliography

Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality

Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure

Michel Foucault, Care of the Self

G.S. Rousseau and Roy Porter, Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment

Ann Snitow and Christine Stansell, eds., Powers of Desire

Georg Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality

Peter Brown, The Body and Society

John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality

Elaine Pagals, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent

Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics

Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language

Week 8: March 1

Part A: Reciprocities: The Self and the Other Self

Reading

Ivan Illich, Gender or Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History

Part B: Individualism and Gender

Bibliography

Karin Hausen, "Geschlechtscharaktere," in Werner Conze, Sozialgeschichte der Familie in der Neuzeit Europas

Carol McCormack and Marilyn Strathern, Culture and Gender

Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual Visions

G.J. Barker-Benfield, Horrors of the Half-Known Life

Bonnie Smith,

Nancy K. Miller, Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing

Patricial Sparks, Imagining a Self

Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures

Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics

Jenijoy LaBelle, Herself Beheld

Patricia Elliott, From Mastery to Analysis: Theories of Gender in Psychoanalytic Feminism

Erica Harth, Cartesian Women

Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, 2 vols.

Emily Martin, The Woman in the Body. A cultural Analysis of Reproduction

Carolyn J. Dean, The Self and Its Pleasures: Bataille, Lacan, and the History of the Decentered Self

Elspeth Probyn, Sexing the Self. Gendered Positions in Cultural Studies

Luce Iragaray, This Sex Which is Not One

Week 9: March 8

Part A: Personality and Sex

Reading

Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1

Part B: Self in Practice

Bibliography

Roger Chartier, The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France

Georges Denrekassa, Les sujets de l'écriture

Alan Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism

Karl Weintraub, The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography

Jan Goldstein, Console and Classify

Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice

David Harvey, Condition of Post Modernity

Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy

Frederic Jameson, "Post Modernism and Consumer Society," in E. Ann Kaplan, Post-Modernism and Its Discontents, other versions in New Left Review 146 (1984) and Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic

Georg Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographien

Shari Binstock, ed., The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women's Autobiography

Della Brodzki, ed., Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography

K.D. Müller, Autobiographie und Roman

A. Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual Labor

Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Anti-Oedipus

Françoise Lionnet, Autobiographical Voices

Week 10: March 15

Part A: Subjectivity

Reading

Paul Smith, Discerning the Subject

Part B: Memory and the Self

Bibliography

Thomas Butler, ed., History, Culture and the Mind

Philip Davis, Memory and Writing

Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution

Georges Benrekassa, La Politique et sa mémoire

P. Nora, Les lieux de mémoire

Augustine, Confessions

Georges Duby, in Samaran, ed., L'histoire et ses méthodes

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

Françoise Zonabend, The Enduring Memory

Frances Yates, The Art of Memory

P. Bertrand, L'oubli, révolution ou mort de l'histoire

Israel Rosenfield, The Invention of Memory

Michèle Simondon, La mémoire et l'oubli dans la pensée grecque

Diderot, D'Alembert's Dream and Rameau's Nephew

Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism

L. Aschieri, Le passé recomposé

Larry J. Squire, Memory and Brain

Siegfried J. Schmidt, Gedächtnis.Probleme und Perspektiven der interdisziplinären Gedächtnisforschung

Anselm Haverkamp and Renate Lachmann, Gedächtniskunst. Raum--Bild--Schrift