Literary theory summaries

?

Saussure, 'Course in General Linguistics'

1) Social phenomena/ 'contract' that precedes individual uses of it

2) 'Parole'  (abstract system agreed upon by community) and 'Langue' (individual participation in system)

3) 'Linguistic sign= signifier + signified'

4) Psychological and audible connection

5) Reciprocal but arbitrary interdependence

6) Homogenous framework- individual uses of system have no power to modify it

7) System of negation with no positive terms 

8) Conceptual foundations for radical interventions of Cameron and Derrida

1 of 6

Deborah Cameron, 'False Dichotomies: Grammar and S

1) Feminist redepolyment of Saussure's theory- 'system of difference'

2) Language= cultural phenomenon shaped by social biases

3) 'Masculine' and 'feminine' do not refer to essences in themselves

4) 'There could be no concept of masculinity without the concept of femininity'- inflected by cultural associations

5) Gendered binary oppositions that govern various levels of social life

6) Derrida- gender inequality perpetuated + augmented through language- any binary system necessitates subordination of one term to another

7) 'Metaphorical gender'- cultural associations that attach themselves to words

8) Jack Rosenthal's 'thought experiment'- social indoctrination, language latent with implications of sexual heirarchy and domination- microcosm for patriarchal systems of power in society

9) Gender= basic grammatical category- conceptual heirarchy manifests concrete inqequalities 

2 of 6

Edward Said, 'Orientalism'

1) Literature's complicity in producing + sustaining unequal power structures

2) Three definitions: 1) academic study 2) theoretical division 3) western discourse used to dominate + claim authority over East

3) Unequal subject/object dialectic- exoticised anthropological object for western study

4) Foucault: 'discourse'= a form of power- continuation of imperial exploitation

5) Western construct + intellectual discourse- less concerned with capturing East, then helping to define west through process of negation

6) 'Strategic location'- position of western author in relation to orient often one of power

7) Spatial politics-- paradoxical erasure of culture

8) 'Orientalism is premised upon exteriority'- double meaning- external power over orient, orient excluded from writing about it

3 of 6

Judith Butler, 'Performative Acts and Gender Const

1) Gender constructed through series of performances

2) Metaphor of 'stylised repeition of acts' within theatrical performance- disputes idea of ender as stable identity or biological fact

3) Construction of a gendered body= act of cultural dissembling

4) Simon de Beauvoir: 'The Second Sex': 'One is not born, but becomes a woman'

5) compel body to conform to set of societal standards- illusion of monolithic, gender abiding self

6) Feminist theoretical tradition: personal is political

7) Body= historical space in which pervasive political structures are reified and reproduced

8) Situates individual acts within broader collective social reality

9) Punitive consequences of failing to perform gender correctly

10) Body= 'materializing of possibilities'= gender can be subverted

4 of 6

Franz Fanon, 'The Wretched Earth'

1) National identity recovered through political + literary activism

2) Three stages of cultural resistance: 1) assimilation 2) disturbance + cultural remembrance 3) violent dismantling of colonial power structures

3) Second phase- necessary for emerging cultural heritage but stagnating effect of existing in past

4) 'Negritude'- black culture rather than national culture

5) Essentialist view= cultural estrangement- complicit in homogenisation of African culture

6) Metaphor: 'battlefield'

7) Prescient of Said's theory of positionality- immersion in African culture

8) 'Awakener of the people', through innovating a 'revolutionary, fighting literature'

9) Metaphor: 'seething pot': nascent African culture- poetry that 'talkes up arms on the people's side'

5 of 6

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 'Queer and Now'

1) Denaturalisation of homosexuality used to argue that homosexuality can be changed

2) 'Unalterably homosexual body'- site of resistance, countering western fantasy of an exclusively heteronormative society

3) Sexual identity not unitary- desires not a seamless continuum

4) Sexuality + gender not continuous and collapsable entities- discontinuous and multifarious

5) Multiple meanings of 'queer'= 'open mesh of possibilities, gaps and disonances'

6) 'queer' politics of disarticulation

7) Contingencies + inconsistencises of gender and sexuality

8) subversive queer readings- fractural complexities of language

9) locates power of queer theory in capacity to illuminate places in text where queer desire emerges- Derrida 'Deconstructionist theory'

6 of 6

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar English Literature resources:

See all English Literature resources »See all Literary theory resources »