120017 AR Interdisc. Course (Gender St): "The Shadow of the Other Subject" (2008S)

In this course, we will focus on "scriptural" female characters - such as Judith, Salome, Beatrice (Dante) - who are complexly reconfigured in Victorian, fin-de-siècle, and post-war male-authored texts. The stories of these female figures under consideration centre on a dynamics of "veiling" and "unveiling" wherein sexual politics is inscribed and/or upset.
The title of this course is taken from an essay of the poststructuralist-psychoanalytical thinker Jessica Benjamin
who argues that the patriarchal conception of "the self" is "paradoxically invested in using the [female] other to represent what is despised or intolerable". Benjamin's argument will be part of the theoretical framework for our analysis. The course, however, also understands the title in a broader way, considering questions such as: "How do the subjects (i.e. the themes) of original texts intertextually cast a shadow on Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Wilde's Salome, and Golding's Free Fall?"; "How do the authors reconfigure these female characters as "the Other" or as "Subject" in specific historical contexts?"; "Why do they place them as the centres to articulate struggles or radically enact contradictions and ambiguities revolving around reason and spirit; education, poetry and desire; morality and perversion?"
Hardy's assault against Victorian moralism, Wilde's radical staging of Salome, and Golding's struggle with dualisms will be compared with examples taken from M. Shelley, A. Sexton, I. Murdoch, "Orlan", Cindy Sherman who introduce a female perspectives on the points discussed.
Requirements: regular attendance & portfolio-notes, participation in critical discussions, oral presentation of a chosen topic (10-15 mins), final written exam.

For further information see: http://homepage.univie.ac.at/melanie.feratova-loidolt