German 850 -- SELF-REPRESENTATION IN EXTREMIS
Prof. Davidson, Summer 1995, Tuesday 12:30 - 3:18, MacQuigg 162
Office Hours: M, W, R 1:30 - 3:00; T 5 - 5:30; By Appointment
Phone: 2-6985 or 784-9351. E-Mail: davidson.92@osu.edu
Description: This is not a course on autobiography. We will be concerned with texts that, in some sense or other, construct a "self," but the relation of the construct to the authorial life will be only one of many strands of thought pursued here and in many cases will not become the primary focus of our discussions. Once thought to be a most natural and transparent mode of writing, the act of "self-writing" has been rendered anything but simple or straight-forward by recent theoretical debates on a number of fronts. Risking oversimplification, one might say that self-representation is a literary presentation of a self created by negotiating a variety of normative issues vital to a given group or society at a given time. This course focuses on such creations as nodal points within these various normative issues in German-language texts from 1870-1940.
In German and Austrian culture, the concentration of those issues became particularly dense and interwoven in the last half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. Among the factors that make this a vital period for the "self": the eighteenth-century notion of the Subjekt began to disintegrate; the explosion of scientific discourses that attempted to categorize norms about subjectivity (in terms of anthropology, gender, generation, "race" and heritage, sexuality, and social standing); the radical changes in social formation (new nationalisms, urbanization & industrialization, shift of power away from the old system of "Stände" [estates] to more specifically class-based hierarchies...); the ascendancy in the mid-nineteenth century of literary realism in both high & popular culture; and, the rise of a discourse on autobiography as a basis of history. This course examines different ways in which self-representation (both in traditional autobiographical and more indirect forms) functions as an unstable, yet vital site of the struggle around these issues during this period. Both canonical and non-canonical texts will provide examples of the aesthetic, experiential, philosophical, and political extremes to which self-representation can be and was taken. Working almost exclusively with primary literature of various types, this course seeks to provide both an interdisciplinary overview of an important period and a variety of perspectives enabling us to re-think the normative issues which constitute our notion of self and self-representation.
In the first half of the course we will look at extreme versions of self-representation as they intersect with particular "categories" (see schedule below), examining the way in which preconceptions about who one was or should be from the late nineteenth century are used and/or attacked in such writing. At each step, however, we should remain aware that these categorical distinctions are artificial and can only give us a notion of the way self-representation is being used when considered along with other discourses. In the second half of the course we will try to draw on the preliminary evaluations made in the first five weeks by examining how these various strands interconnect in texts from the 1920s to the 1940s.
Requirements:
850 Credit --
1) 30% - active preparation for and participation in classroom discussion [no formal presentations, but you may be asked to lead a discussion on a particular topic.];
2) 30% - two short written assignments (2-4pp);
3) 40% - Take-home final exam due last day of exam week (??).
960 Credit --
1) 20% - active preparation for and participation in classroom discussion;
2) 70% - two short written assignments as preliminary stages of a seminar paper (15-20pp);
3) 10% - final oral interview (ca. 30 minutes)
Texts
Berliner Kindheit Walter Benjamin
Ecce Homo Friedrich Nietzsche
Gilgi, eine von uns Irmgard Keun
Jugend einer Arbeiterin Adelheid Popp
Venus im Pelz Leopold v. Sacher-Masoch
Photocopied Course Reader
Structure:
Week 1 Introduction
Preliminary discussion of self-representation and the cultural-historical context
Week 2 The Role of Self-Representation ca. 1900
Dichtung und Wahrheit: Misch, Dilthey & Goethe (excerpts in Reader)
Interiority and Social Norms: Schnitzler's "Lt. Gustl" (Reader)
Week 3 Philosophy and Self-Representation
Primary reading: Ecce Homo
Suggested: Also sprach Zarathustra & "Über Wahrheit und Luge" (Reader)
Week 4 Gender, Sexuality, and Self-Representation
Primary reading:Venus im Pelz
Suggested: Sexology texts (Reader)
Week 5 Inversion, Mimicry, and Self-Representation
Andreas-Salomé "Der Mensch als Weib" ("Die in-sich ruhende Frau")
Freud "Die sexuellen Abirrungen" from Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie
Week 6 Race, Science and Self-Representation [Writing Assignment #1 Due]
from Otto Weininger's Geschlecht & Charakter
from Freud's Autobiography and Interpretation of Dreams (Reader)
Week 7 Politics and Self-Representation
Primary reading: Jugend einer Arbeiterin and T. Mann's Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Reader)
Suggested: Texts on women's movements
Week 8 The Poetic I and the Poetic We: [Writing Assignment #2 Due]
Benn's "Epilog und lyrisches Ich"
Bloch's Spuren (excerpts in Reader)
Week 9 The Difficulty of Saying "us"
Primary reading: Gilgi, eine von uns
Suggested: Andreas-Salomé "Before WWI and after"; Petro on Weimar culture
Week 10 Philosophy and Self-Representation Revisited
Benjamin's Berliner Kindheit