REL 290 Power and Transgression (Not offered 1999-2000)
Standard dictionary definitions make it clear that transgression always presupposes limits-be they defined by law, duty, orders, or social conventions. These limits are overstepped, often in an excessive act heavily connotated as negative or even sinful. It is obvious that a study of transgression-and all those actions and texts that are related to it, such as the carnival, symbolic reversal, subversion, revolution-must also deal with social norms, conventions, systems of meaning-ultimately, with semiotics, authority, and power. To deal with transgression implies dealing with center, periphery, and the outside of a given cultural system; it also implies the definition of a given cultural order and the systems to keep it in place. In the first part of the seminar we will explore a number of themes related to the problematics of transgression and established power, such as subversion, symbolic reversal, counterculture on the one hand, and hegemony, authority, and the state on the other hand. Other key issues are the construction and the representation of transgressive and subversive phenomena, their creators and their audiences. In the second part of the course we will focus on a number of texts which develop ideas of power and transgression/subversion to produce a politics of liberation. The authors we will discuss include Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, Antonio Gramsci, Michael Taussig, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Requirements: 5- to 7-page midterm test, 10-page research paper, and a take-home exam.