Take Home Final Exam
DUE BY 7 P.M. ON MONDAY MAY 5
1. You ABSOLUTELY MUST discuss some aspect of each of the three “units” of theory covered since the midterm exam. These units are: Ideology and Discourse, which includes Althusser, Bakhtin, and Foucault; Race and Postcolonialism, which includes Gates, Said, and Anzaldua; and Postmodernism, which includes Klages on Postmodernism and Deleuze and Guattari.
2. You can choose ONE of TWO ways to discuss these three required units of theory.
OPTION I: Write ONE essay which analyzes some aspect of all three, following the questions below or writing one of your own.
OPTION II: Choose ONE quotation from each of the THREE units of theory. Discuss the significance of the quotation by placing it within the context of the author’s overall argument, and give examples to illustrate or argue with the author’s ideas.
3. The exam should be typed, double-spaced, with a reasonable (10-12 point) font size and reasonable (1 inch) margins. The exam should be between 6 and 8 pages total. Exams longer than this are welcome, but exams shorter than this may attract attention.
4. This is a take-home exam. Feel free to use your notes, the course web page and lecture notes, your books, your worksheets, and other sources; you may discuss your work with others. If you use your worksheets, make sure you do not simply reproduce what you’ve already said there. Be sure to work specifically with the assigned readings, and to use direct quotes from the assigned readings wherever possible. Beware of relying too heavily on the web lecture notes, and not enough on the assigned readings themselves. Be sure you explain the significance of all quotes clearly and completely. Be sure you define all theoretical terms clearly and completely. Be as specific as possible as often as possible. Use direct examples to illustrate your ideas. Feel free to ground your explanations of the theories in readings of specific literary and/or cultural texts. If you use ANY source outside of those assigned for class, be sure to footnote or endnote them properly.
5. The exam is due by SEVEN p.m. on MONDAY MAY 5. THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE DEADLINE: NO EXCEPTIONS. NO EXAMS WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER THIS DATE. This means you should start working on the exam as soon as possible, and leave yourself some leeway time in case of unforeseen breakdowns (car, computer, brain) or other natural or unnatural disasters. You can turn in the exam BEFORE the due date; put it in the hands, or in the mailbox, of the person whom you wish to have grade it.
6. If you want your exam returned to you with comments, please include a STAMPED SELF-ADDRESSED ENVELOPE. Use 2 first-class stamps to cover postage; use a 9x12 mailing envelope (not a letter-sized envelope). Unless you SPECIFICALLY INDICATE that you want your exam returned by including a stamped self-addressed envelope, the graders will not make an effort to comment on your final exam.
OPTION I:
Choose ONE of the following questions and discuss ALL THREE units of theory in one complete essay. The essay will be graded as a formal writing assignment, meaning that a thesis/argument, strong organization and transitions, correct spelling and grammar will all be taken into account, along with the content--the ideas, explanations, and examples--in the essay. This essay will be worth a maximum of 100 points toward the final grade.
A) Why is this course required for the English major? What does each unit of theory contribute to the ways we think about literature?
B) Discuss the ways these theorists understand social practices (such as writing or other forms of language usage) as constructs, rather than as “natural” occurances or formations. Consider how “ideology” shapes social practices and the beliefs of individual subjects, according to each type of theory. You might examine how a specific ideology shapes a specific practice and/or a specific idea of subjectivity to focus your discussion.
C) Take a theory and apply it to a specific cultural text: a movie, tv show, book, song, poem, etc. Do this for each unit of theory; you can use the same text for all three units or a different text for each one. Discuss what the theory illuminates about the text and what it obscures.
D) Pick one article we have read and explore how the theorist interacts with the other theories. How do the other theories shape, legitimize, and/or contradict the theorist/theory you are discussing? Use specific examples from the texts.
OPTION II:
Identify ONE of the following quotes for EACH UNIT of theory. Discuss the significance of the quote in relation to the rest of the article where it appears. How does the quote illustrate one of the author’s central ideas or concepts? What terms does it define, or what premises does it establish? Be sure to analyze the specific language of the quotation itself; do a close reading of the quotation as the core of your discussion of its significance. Be sure to relate the quote to the rest of the article. Each discussion will be worth a maximum of 33.33 points.
A) DISCOURSE AND IDEOLOGY. Choose ONE of the following:
1) “...the individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject, i.e., in order that he shall (freely) accept his subjection, i.e. in order that he shall make the gestures and actions of his subjection ‘all by himself.’ There are no subjects except by and for their subjection. That is why they ‘work all by themselves.’”
2) “Unitary language constitutes the theoretical expression of the historical processes of linguistic unification and centralization, an expression of the centripetal forces of language. A unitary language is not something given but is always in essence posited--and at every moment of its linguistic life it is opposed to the realities of heteroglossia. But at the same time it makes its real presence felt as a force for overcoming this heteroglossia, imposing specific limits to it, guaranteeing a certain maximum of mutual understanding and crystalizing into a real, although still relative, unity--the unity of the reigning conversational (everyday) and literary language, ‘correct language.’”
3)”Our society is not one of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces; the circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralization of knowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorage of power; it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies. We are much less Greeks than we believe. We are neither in the amphitheater, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism.”
B) RACE AND POSTCOLONIALISM. Choose ONE of the following:
1) “Yet--and here we must be very clear--Orientalism overrode the Orient. As a system of thought about the Orient, it always rose from the specifically human detail to the general transhuman one; an observation about a tenth-century Arab poet multiplied itself into a policy towards (and about) the Oriental mentality in Egypt, Iraq, or Arabia. Similarly a verse from the Koran would be considered the best evidence of an ineradicable Muslim sensuality. Orientalism assumed an unchanging Orient, absolutely different (the reasons change from epoch to epoch) from the West.”
2) “I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess--that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler. I remember being sent to the cornder of the classroom for ‘talking back’ to the Anglo teacher when all I was trying to do was tell her how to pronounce my name. ‘If you want to be American, speak ‘American.’ If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong.’”
3) “"Perhaps only Tar Baby is as enigmatic and compelling a figure from Afro-American mythic discourse as is that oxymoron, the Signifying Monkey. The ironic reversal of a received racist image in the Western imagination of the black as simianlike, the Signifying Monkey--he who dwells at the margins of discourse, ever punning, ever troping, ever embodying the ambiguities of language--is our trope for repetition and revision, indeed our trope of chiasmus itself, repeating and reversing simultaneously as he does in one deft discursive act." ”
C) POSTMODERNISM. Choose ONE of the following:
1) “This approach defines postmodernism as the name of an entire social formation, or set of social /historical attitudes; more precisely, this approach contrasts ‘postmodernity’ with ‘modernity,’ rather than ‘postmodernism’ with ‘modernism.’
What’s the difference?”
2) Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be. This is a very different form from the tree or root, which plots a point, fixes an order.”
3)"The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense." ”