120088 AR Literature Course (interactive) 323/324: "Entropy " (2008W)

This interdisciplinary workshop centres on an in-depth discussion of the meanings of terms such as "deconstruction", "master-narrative", and "entropy" in the context of poststructuralist theories and how these can be applied in an interpretative reading (post)-modernist novels and dramas. For a start, we will consider Pynchon's 1960s application of the term "entropy" to critically describe cultural processes determined by master-narratives as closed systems that inevitably progress to an (inner) chaotic orderlessness. In an analysis of texts by D. Barnes, A. Miller, E. Albee, J. Winterson, we will explore how diverse closed systems are portrayed on narrative levels, thematic levels, and the level of claustrophobic depictions of intra- and interpersonal relations. Central to our analysis will be the post-modernist examination of the textual versus metaphorical significance and how binary oppositions are negotiated and destablised in the texts - such as: consumerism/consumption; nature/culture; the sexual/the spiritual; otherness/identity; science-irrationality/desire; reality/illusion; game/war; the social/the private; religion/politics.