EVENTS

EVENT 1

The Theory Circle Expert Lecture 1
July 2 2014
VTM NSS College
Dhanuvachapuram

Speaker :Dr. P.K. Rajashekharan

EVENT 2

The Theory Circle Expert Lecture 2
October 13 2014
NSS College Pandalam

Speaker : Dr. P.P.Raveendran



EVENT 3

The Theory Circle Quiz 
December 3 2014
Institute of English

Quiz Mater " Prof. p. harikrishna

External Links

Critical Theory
The Virtual Theorist
Questia
Questia Online Library
Voice of the Shuttle
Online University Lowdown
Galileo
Brain Pickings
Cyberspace Hypertext & Critical Theory

Theories of New Media

Semester 3

Module IV: 

Theories of New Media

 

Media theories examine the reciprocal relationship between media and its audience. The development of print media and digital media is associated with the development of consumerism and commercialism. Media theory emphasizes the fact that media cannot exist outside the ideological constraints and become constitutive of the very ideology it re-presents.

 

Prescribed Essay

Knowledge to Policy. Eds. Manuel Castells and Gustavo Cardoso. Washington, DC: Johns  

        Hopkins Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2005. Pp. 3-21.Web.

Theories of New Media

 The contemporary concerns of new media theory can be found in the investigation of the electronic media based on interactivity. With the studies on digital media, social media, cyber punk novels and Cyber Theory, the issues of self, identity, community, reality/virtuality are dealt with.


I.Schools of Media Theory

·         Marshall Mc Luhan- Understanding Media, The Medium is the Message

·         Raymond Williams- Television: Technology and Cultural Form

·         Baudrillard- Simulation-simulacra- The Gulf War Did Not Take Place

·         Zygmunt Bauman- Liquid Modernity, 44 Letters from a Liquid Modern World

II. Major Concepts

A-Life

Artificial Intelligence

Blogging

Community

Culture jamming

Cyber Punk
Cyber Culture

Cyber Space,

Cybernetics

cyberfeminism

cyborg

Digital Divide

Domain Name

dot.com

email

Encryption

G3

Gameboy

Hacker

Hactivist

HTML

Hypertext

Hyperreality

 Informatics

Liminality

Liquid Modernity

Narrowcasting

Netiquette

Netizen

Network Society

 Old media/New media

Online/Offline life/Cultures

Posthumanism/Post-biology

Pornography

Public Sphere

Technological Determinism 
Virtual Geographies

 Virtual reality (VR)

III.Major Figures

·         Michael Benedikt

·         Sherry Turkle

·         Maria Bakardjieva

·         Manuel Castells

·         Donna Harraway

·         Lelia Green

·         David Bell

·         Douglas Thomas

IV. Major Works

·         Michael Benedikt- Cyborg Manifesto

·         Sherry Turkle –Life on Screen

·         Manuel Castells- The Rise of Network Society

·         Lelia Green- Technoculture

·         David Bell- Cyberculture Theorists, Science, Technology Culture

·         David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy (eds). The Cybercultures Reader

·         Douglas Thomas- Hacker Culture

V. Sample Reading

·                   https://public.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/neuromancer.html

 

Postcolonial Theories

Semester 3
Module III: 


Postcolonial Criticism

The analysis of racism and ethnocentrism in texts from the past may have relevance to the ways we live our lives today.  Textual analysis of race, ethnicity, and postcoloniality can serve as a starting point for positive forms of social change in the future. 

 
Prescribed Essay
Edward W. Said. “Introduction”. Orientalism. UK: Penguin. 1900. Pp.1-28.

Postcolonial Theory

Postcolonialism attempts to understand the political, social, cultural and psychological operations of the colonialist and anticolonialist ideologies. Postcolonial theory analyses the ways in which a text reinforces or resists colonialism’s oppressive ideology.

 
I. Schools of Postcolonial Thought

·         Phase I – Britain, America, Canada, Australia

·         Phase II – India, Africa, Latin America

·         Post Orientalist Historiography

·         Subaltern Studies

·         Postcolonial Feminist Thought

II. MajorConcepts

• Aboriginal/Indigenous People
• Abrogation
• Appropriation
• Authentic/Authenticity
• Binarism
• Centre/Margin
• Periphery
• Civilized/ Barbaric
• Decolonization
• Diaspora
• Discourse
• Dislocation
• Essentialism
• Euro-centrism
• Exotic/Exoticism
• Hegemony
• Hybridity
• Imperialism
• Liminality
• Marginality
• Mimicry
• Miscegenation
• Modernity
• Nation/Nationalism
• Native/ Nativism
• Orality
• Orientalism
• Orient/ Occident
• Other/ Otherness
• Neo-Orientalism
• Savage/Civilized
• Subject
• Surveillance
• Third World
• Fourth World

III. Major Figures

·         Albert Memmi

·         Leopold Sedar Senghor

·         Mohandas K. Gandhi

·         Aime Cesaire

·         Edward Said

·         Homi Bhabha

·         Gayathri Spivak

·         Benita Parry

·         Benedict Anderson

·         Robert Young

·         Leela Gandhi

·         Simon During

·         Gayathri Vishwanathan

·         Ashish Nandy

·         Talal Azad

·         Aamir Amin

·         Arif Dirlik

·         Ngugi wa Thiong’o

·         Gyan Prakash

·         Ranajit Guha

·         Partha Chatterjee

·         David Arnold

·         Gyanendra Pandey

·         Dipesh Chakrabarthy

·         bell hooks

·         Sara Suleri

·         Sandra Harding

·         Trinh- T. Minh Ha

·         Ella Shohat

·         Kumkum Sangari

IV. Major Works

·         Aime Cesaire – Discourse on Colonialism

·         Frantz Fanon- Black Skin White Masks, The Wretched of the Earth

·          Albert Memmi- The Colonizer and the Colonized

·         Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind
Edward Siad- Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism

·         Homi Bhabha- Location of Culture, Nation and Narration

·         Leela Gandhi- Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, Affective Communities

·         Robert Young- Postcolonialism: A Historical Introduction

·         Gayatri Spivak- Can the Subaltern Speak

·         Elleke Boehmer- Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures
Ania Loomba - Colonialism/ Postcolonialism 

V. Websites

 VI. Sample Reading

suite101.com/…/caliban-and-post-colonialism-in-shakespeares-the-tempest-a261516

 

Theories of New Historicism

Semester 3
Module II: 

Theories of New Historicism 
 

History is not linearly progressive and is not reducible to the activities of prominent individuals. The mundane activities and conditions of everyday life can tell us much about the belief systems of a time period.  Literary texts are connected in complex ways to the time period in which they were created and systems of social power are both reflected in and reinforced by such texts. 

Prescribed Essay

• Michel Foucault. “What is an Author?” Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Ed. David

                             Lodge. UK: Longman, 2000. Pp. 174-187. 

New Historicism

New Historicism focusses on the historicity of literary texts and the textuality of history. The New Historicists believe in the impossibility of objective analysis of history. New Historicism is thus a critique of apriori systems of knowledge. The reading of a literary text or culture is not definitive.

I. Schools of New Historicist Thought

·         Foucauldian Studies

·         Subaltern Studies

·         Feminist New Historicist Studies

II. MajorConcepts

·         Critiques of historical reason

·         Discipline

·         Discourse

·         Discursive formations

·         Episteme

·         Textuality

·         Intertextuality

·         Historicity

·         Historiogrphy

·         Archaelogy

·         Discursive Practise

·         Episteme

·         Geneology

·         Gaze

·         Historical Apriori

·         Heterotopia

·         Panopticon

·         Surveillance

·         Power

·         Knowledge

·         Phenemenology

·         Repressive Hypothesis

·         Subjectivity

III. Major Figures

·         Nietzsche

·         Michel Foucault

·         Stephen Greenblatt

·         Clifford Geertz

·         Hayden White

·         Pierre Bourdieu

IV. Major Works

·          Michel Foucault-  
   The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, Language, Counter-   memory, Practice

    Madness and Civilization
    Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel
    Birth of the Clinic
    The Order of Things
    The Archaeology of Knowledge
    Discipline and Punish
    The History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction
    The History of Sexuality, Vol. II: The Use of Pleasure
    The History of Sexuality, Vol. III: The Care of the Self

·         
 Stephen Greenblatt- Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England

·         Clifford Geertz- The Interpretation of Cultures

·         Hayden White- Metahistory

·         Pierre Bourdieu – Outline of a Theory of Practice, The Field of Cultural Production

    
 V. Sample Reading

prezi.com/xhh1jf-_d-qr/great-gatsby-new-historicism

 

Marxist Theories

Semester 3
Module I: 

Marxist Theories
 

Literary and other cultural texts are ideological in background, form and function and the production and consumption of texts reflects class ideologies. An attention to the material conditions of life and a critical engagement with our attitudes about those conditions are essential for achieving positive social change.

 
Prescribed Essay: Raymond Williams. “Literature.” Marxism and Literature. USA: Oxford UP, 1978. Pp. 45-54.

Marxism

Marxism accentuates the notion that all human events and productions are embedded within the social, historical and economic contexts. The ideologies and norms which exist in our society depend on the interests of those who control the modes of production.

As a “politicized form of historiography” cultural materialism acts as a connecting link between Marxism and PostModernism. As a critical method Cultural Materialism combines an attention to the historical context, theoretical method, political commitment and textual analysis.

I. Schools of Marxist Thought

·         Marxism –Leninism

·         Maoism

·         Western Marxism

·         Structural Marxism

·         Neo-Marxism

·         The Frankfurt School

·         Cultural Marxism

·         Indian Marxism

II. Major Concepts

·        Alienation

·        Base structure/Super Structure

·        Hegemony

·        Bourgeoisie

·        Capitalism

·        Critical Realism

·        Culture Industry

·        Dialectical Materialism

·        Epistemology

·        False Consciousness

·        Fetishism

·        Ideology

·        Means of production

·        Mechanical reproduction

·        Mimesis

·        Neo Marxism

·        Post modernism

·        Late capitalism

·        Proletariat

·        Socialist Realism

·        Soviet Marxism

·        Surplus Value

·        Theory of Reflection

·        Use Value

·        Western Marxism

·        Traditional Marxism

III. Major Figures

·         Karl Marx

·         Friedrich Engels

·         Georg Lukacs

·         Bertolt Brecht

·         Max Horkheimer

·         Theodor Adorno

·         Herbert Marcuse

·         Walter Benjamin

·         Lucien Goldman

·         Louis Althusser

·         Pierre Macherey

·         Raymond Williams

·         Terry Eagleton

·         Fredric Jameson

·         Ernesto Laclau

·         Chantal Mouffe

·         Zygmunt Bauman

·         Aijaz Ahmed

·         Stuart Hall

·         Antonio Negri

·         Michael Hardt 

.      Slavoj Zizek

   IV. Major Works

·         Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels- Communist Manifesto

·         Karl Marx- Das Kapital, German Ideology, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts

·         Friedrich Engels- The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

·         Vladimir Ilyich Lenin- Theory of Reflection

·         Georgi V. Plekhanov - Fundamental Problems

·         Georg Lukacs -  The Historical Novel, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, History and Class Consciousness

·         Bertolt Brecht- Epic theatre, Debate on Classical Heritage

·         Walter Benjamin- “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

·         Max Horkheimer- Critique of Instrumental Reason

·         Herbert Marcuse- Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis

·         Lucien Goldman- The Hidden God

·         Pierre Macherey- A Theory of Literary Production

·         Theodor Adorno- Aesthetic Theory- Culture Industry- Negative Dialectics

·         Jurgen Habermas- The Theory of Communicative Action

·         Antonio Gramsci- Prison Notebooks

·         Christopher Caudwell- Illusion and Reality

·         E.P. Thompson- The Making of the English Working Class

·         Louis Althusser- Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

·         Terry Eagleton- Marxism and Literary Criticism

·         Fredric Jameson- Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

·         Raymond Williams- Marxism and Literature

·         Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield- Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism

V. Sample Reading

·         https://utah.instructure.com/courses/108427/modules/items/450444