Critical Issues in Contemporary Culture SYLLABUS - Gregory Sholette

Critical Issues in Contemporary Culture
Instructor: Gregory Sholette
This course is an introductory course in critical theory that explores the changing definition of
identity, culture, aesthetics, and ethics and how these concepts shape the role of the artist
within contemporary society. It is structured around three sets of readings that include:
• I Dead Fathers, consists of several constituting texts from the Western philosophical
tradition.
• II Anxious Offspring, forms a critical response to part but from within that tradition.
• III Unruly Others, offers essay by people from other cultural backgrounds who have
actively engaged with the Western canon and sought either to revise it, or to go beyond it.
SYLLABUS
Please read the following short essays prior to our first class:
Benedict Anderson “Cultural Roots” (1983 – also in book III)
Georges Bataille, “The Big Toe” (1929 – also in book III)
Theodore Adorno, “Black as an Ideal” (1970 – also in book II)
Scene One: Dead Fathers
Week 1: pessimism, perversity and community
Following an introduction to the course will be a discussion of this week’s readings.
Questions include: How does the idea of culture emerging from an organic community
compare with that of culture as a conscious political construction? What aesthetic, ethical
and civic outlook might result from taking one or the other of these positions? Can either
pessimism or perversity be acceptable positions from which to respond to contemporary
culture?
Readings for next week:
Plato “book X of The Republic” (5 th – 4 th Century b.c.)
Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer” (1937)
Week 2: portrait of the artist as civic virtue and vice
The class will divide into two debate teams. One team will defend and the other will
critique Plato’s Republic focusing on the role of the artist it his “ideal” society. After this a
second debate will do the same with Benjamin’s essay focusing on his model of the
“ideal” artist who actively seeks to transform society.
Readings for next week:
Immanuel Kant. “Critique of Aesthetic Judgement” (1800)
Amelia Jones, “Interpreting Feminist bodies: The Unframeability of Desire” (c1995)
Week 3: beauty, sublimity, and disgust
The instructor will lead the class in a reading and discussion of Kant’s text. The primary
areas of concentration will be the philosopher’s definition of: taste (#s 2 & 4), beauty (#s
6, 10, 13), the sublime (#s 23, 27, 28, 29, 30) his idea of artistic genius (#46), the ranking

of the arts (# 53), the role of disgust in representation (#48) and the morality of the
disinterested observer (#s 59 & #41). After the break a class member will lead us in a
discussion of the Jones text accompanied by slides.
Questions and themes for discussion include:
What upsets Kant’s idea of disinterested beauty? How and why have certain feminist
artists (and others) made this the aim of their art? In light of the presumed educational
mission that the museum, or theater or other cultural institution symbolizes, should such
“transgressive” work be presented to the public and if so in what context?
Reading for next week: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, “Lecture on Aesthetics” (1818)
and Edward Said, “In the Shadow of the West” (1984)
Week 4: telos and tyranny
The instructor will lead the class in a reading and discussion of Hegel’s concept of
dialectics, history and aesthetic progress. After the break a class member will lead in a
discussion of the Said essay (with optional audio and/or visual accompaniment).
Questions for debate: How does Hegel get us out of one set of problems inherited from
Kant and then thrust us into another, perhaps worse set of constraints? How have cultural
institutions, sometimes quite literally, organized themselves around Hegel’s model of
history? In light of Said’s critique, is it possible to re-think the representation between
subject and object, self and other, history and progress without subsuming one to the other
and without doing violence to the subject?
The first writing assignment: Write a three page paper in which you use both Hegel and
Said to critically “read” the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago (or local museum.)
Readings for next week:
Karl Marx, “The German Ideology” (1846 –excerpts,)
Karl Marx, “Fetishism of the Commodities” (1887),
Ferdinand de Sassure, “Nature of the Linguistic Sign” (1916)
Roland Barthes, “The Great Family of Man” (1957)
Roland Barthes, “The World of Wrestling” (1957)
Week 5: readings in the real world
Turn in papers. Instructor leads in a discussion of the Marx and Sassure texts. After the
break a member of the class will present the Barthes essays.
Questions for debate: What does Marx achieve by turning Hegel “on his head”? Does the
concept of commodity fetishism apply to the arts, if so how, if not why not? Is the science
of signs proposed by Sassure and employed by Barthes a useful technique for interpreting
and presenting art to the public? Or is it useful only to other academics? Imagine Sassure’s
and Marx’s ideas combined. What strengths and limitations do you see in these methods
for interpreting art and culture and what sort of cultural institution might they produce?
Reading for next week:
Sigmund Freud, “The Dream Work” (1916)

Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of
the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience: (1949)
Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (1970)
Scene Two: Anxious Offspring
Week 6: ethics and power
Return of papers.
The instructor leads class in a reading and discussion of the Freud and Lacan texts. After
the break a member of the class will lead in a discussion of the Althusser essay.
Questions for discussion:
If we agree with Freud, Lacan and Althusser (following Marx) that our understanding of
the world is always first processed by the social institutions of language and
representation, then is meaning decided in the last instance by those with the most
institutional power? If this premise is true, how does an arts administrator define and
maintain her ethics when power, not truth or beauty, is the actual medium of cultural
institutions? How does one devise an ethical working relationship serving oftenconflicting
needs of artists, funders, staff, board members, and the public?
Second writing assignment: If identity is founded on loss and misrecognition as Lacan
argues, what does this suggest regarding the traditional mission of most cultural
institutions? What might a museum, theater or archive based on the theories of Freud and
Lacan look like? (The use of visuals is permitted with this assignment.)
Readings for next week: Mikhail Bakhtin, “Laughter and Freedom” (1940)
Roland Barthes, “Death of the Author” (1968)
Jacques Derrida “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1966)
Week 7: is freedom just another word?
Turn in papers. A member of the class will lead in the discussion of the Bakhtin and
Barthes essays, and after the break a second student leads the discussion of Derrida text.
Questions for debate: These texts concern the opening-up of meaning and authority to
multiple readings, some of which contradict the intent of an author. If we agree with these
authors that liberation and play are connected, what possible implications does such
“deconstruction” of authorial intentions hold for cultural administrators and institutions
that typically symbolize serious, cultural authority? How do the different notions of
liberation, play and laughter proposed by Bathes, Bakhtin and Derrida agree and where
do they differ? How important is the idea of freedom to contemporary society and what
should institutions do if anything to respond to this need or its lack? Is there such a thing
as an alternative or counter-institutional space?
Reading for next week: Walter Benjamin, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
(1936)

Week 8: revolutionizing art production
Return of papers Instructor leads in a reading of the Benjamin text.
After the break the class will form two debate teams.
Prior to the end of class all assignments for the final paper are determined and student
progress is reviewed.
Some questions for debate: Benjamin proposes that modern imaging technology has
dethroned the unique status of the traditional art object. He argues that all art is tied to
politics and that people who engage with culture must choose to either make this fact
transparent or to mystify this link while exploring the form of production culture takes in
the process. Is this a viable position today? The class will divide into two groups and
using your own experience and words one half will defend and the other half challenge
this assertion with the instructor acting as mediator.
Readings for next week:
Clemet Greenberg, “Modernist Painting” (1963)
Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” (1982)
Week 9: modernism and after
A member of the class leads in a discussion of the Greenberg essay (with slides) and the
instructor leads in a reading and discussion of the Jameson text.
Questions for discussion:
From Kant to Greenberg, the autonomy of art from popular culture, politics, and society
has been a central feature of western aesthetics and institutions. But if we accept
Jameson’s description of the post-modernist era, what has been gained and what lost in
terms of aesthetics and cultural identity? What changes in art institutions have grown out
of this paradigm shift? How might one manage the presentation and management of a
post-modern culture and what does it imply in terms of the artist and the public for art in
the years ahead?
Third writing assignment: Describe in your own terms and using your own examples the
shift from a modernist to post-modern aesthetic. Give examples of what appears
consistent and what seems different between the two outlooks. Conclude your paper by
commenting on the way a post-modern outlook might affect your career.
Readings for next week: Terry Eagleton, “From the Polis to Postmodernism” in The
Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990),
Dick Hebdige, “Introduction: Subculture and Style” and “From Culture to Hegemony”
in Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979)

Week 10, November 2: new paradigms
Turn in papers.The instructor leads in a reading of the Eagleton essay as well as
summarizing the key themes discussed in the class up to now. After the break a member of
the class leads in a discussion of the Hebdige essay.
A screening of excerpts from Chris Marker’s film Sans Soleil.
Readings for next week: Franz Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness” (1952)
Staurt Hall, New Ethnicities (1989)
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “The Black Man’s Burden” (1993)
Scene Three: Unruly Others
Week 11: identities in crisis
Return of papers. A member of the class will lead in the reading and discussion of the Fanon text.
Another will leads in the discussion of the Hall essay and a third in the Gates Jr. text.
Questions for discussion: The writers argue that one’s sense of identity and social status is
affected by the way they appear to others, but in an ideal, democratic society should such
differences be taken into account? Is there such a thing as “color blind” casting for example? And
if identity is not natural but is instead formed by culture should special exhibitions, programs, and
even museums be devoted to people of a particular race, gender, or sexual orientation? By the
same token, should the kinds of artwork, writing, music and theater one presents as an arts
administrator (or instructor) reflect a broader idea of culture or cultures?
Readings for next week: Homi K. Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders” (1985)
Tinh T. Minh-ha, “No Master Territories” (1991)
Fourth writing assignment: Debate the pros and cons of a class, race and gender-neutral aesthetic
outlook as the mission of a contemporary cultural institution. Use at least one specific example
selected from experience or a recent news event.
Week 12: hybrid selves
Turn in papers. The instructor will lead in a reading and discussion of the Bhabha text. After the
break a member of the class will lead in a reading and discussion of the Minh-ha text and her film
“Living in the Round”
Questions for debate: By applying post-structuralist theories to the image of the colonial subject
Bhabha and Minh-ha open-up identity (like a text) to multiple readings, but who is affected by
this revised notion of subjectivity? How might this hybrid identity respond to actual prejudice on
the job and in public life? What implications might this idea have for changing the practices of
cultural institutions?

Readings for next week: Michel Foucault, “Panopticism” from Discipline and Punish (1975)
Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control” (1990)
Week 13: more pessimism?
Return of papers. A member of the class leads in a reading of the Foucault essay (with visuals).
The instructor leads class in a reading and discussion of the Deleuze essay. The class will then
break into two debating teams.
Questions for debate: Defend and critique the similarity and differences that cultural institutions,
such as museums, television, theater and universities, share with the models of human
consciousness and society presented by Foucault and Deleuze. Is it possible to think or act outside
the society of discipline? How about outside or against the society of control? Assuming escape
from these institutional frameworks is conceivable at all do you ignore, nurture, or eliminate this
other, and what are the implications of each position?
Readings for next week: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988) Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak, “Postmarked Clacutta, India” (interview: 1987)
Cathy Griggers, “Lesbian Bodies in the Age of (Post) mechanical Reproduction (1994)
Week 14: speaking out loud
Members of the class lead in a reading of the Griggers and Spivak essays.
Questions for debate: How have feminist artists, writers and activists used critical theory to devise
new political and aesthetic practices? What implications might these positions have for devising
new institutions for the presentation of art? How about for modifying existing institutions?
Readings for final week: Georges Bataille, “The Notion of Expenditure” (1933)
Gilles Deleuze, “ Rhizome Versus Trees” from A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism
¨ and Schizophrenia (1987)
Dave Hickey, “Nothing Like the Son: on Robert Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio” (1995)
Week 15: final thoughts on beauty, society, and hope
Members of the class lead in a reading and discussion of the Bataille, the Hickey and Deluze
essays.
Questions for discussion: Where does the responsibility of the arts administrator lie? Is it with the
artist including those who denounce all concerns with social institutions by living and sometimes
dying for their work? Or is it as a mediator of different social spheres and publics? What role
should beauty, ethics, and power play in these considerations? What alternatives can one envision
to the present institutional system if any?
Week 16, 12/14: student presentations
• Note: Several useful glossaries of theory-related terms can be found today including one in the
book Art History and its Methods: a Critical Anthology edited by Eric Fernie.(Phaidon Press:
London 1995.) There is also a book entitled Artspeak that has another useful glossary.

I The Dead Fathers
Plato, “The Republic” (5 th – 4 th Century b.c.)
Immanuel Kant. “Critique of Aesthetic Judgement” (1800)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, “Lecture on Aesthetics” (1818)
Karl Marx, “The German Ideology” (1846)
Karl Marx, “Fetishism of Commodity” (1887)
Sigmund Freud, “The Dream Work” (1916)
Ferdinand de Sassure, “Nature of the Linguistic Sign” (1916)
II Anxious Offspring
Walter Benjamin, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936)
Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer” (1937)
Mikhail Bakhtin, “Laughter and Freedom” (1940)
Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of
the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience: (1949)
Roland Barthes, “The Great Family of Man” (1957)
Roland Barthes, “The World of Wrestling” (1957)
Roland Barthes, “Death of the Author” (1968)
Jacques Derrida “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1966)
Clemet Greenberg, “Modernist Painting” (1963)
Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (1970)
Theodore Adorno, “Black as an Ideal” (1970)
Michel Foucault, “Panopticism” from Discipline and Punish (1975)
Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control” (1990)
Dick Hebdige, “Introduction: Subculture and Style” and
“From Culture to Hegemony” in Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979)
Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” (1982)
Terry Eagleton, “From the Polis to Postmodernism” in
The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990)
III Unruly Others
Franz Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness” (1952)
Edward Said, “In the Shadow of the West” (1984)
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “The Black Man’s Burden” (1993)
Staurt Hall, New Ethnicities (1989)
Cathy Griggers, “Lesbian Bodies in th eAge of (Post)mechanical Reproduction (1994)
Amelia Jones, “Interpreting Feminist bodies: The Unframeability of Desire” (c1995)
Dave Hickey, “Nothing Like the Son: on Robert Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio” (1995)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Postmarked Clacutta, India” (interview: 1987)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988)
Homi K. Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders” (1985)
Tinh T. Minh-ha, “No Master Territories” (1991)
Benedict Anderson “Cultural Roots” from Imagined Communities: Reflections on

the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983)
Georges Bataille, “The Big Toe” (1929)
Georges Bataille, “The Notion of Expenditure” (1933)
Gilles Deleuze, “ Rhizome Versus Trees” from A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia (1987)