Syllabus
Teacher: prof. Michael Shapiro
Reading, Discussion, Viewing Schedule:
Session 1 (October 1) Readings: Jacques Ranciere, “Fictions of Time” and Shapiro, “Punctuations Introduction.”
Session 2 (October 8) Readings: Kafka, “The Burrow,” Shapiro, “The Politics of Fear,” Kouba, “Perspective of the Outside” (in Kouba and Pivoda eds. Franz Kafka: Minority Report).
Session 3 (October 15) Shapiro, “Politicizing Ulysses,” Auerbach, “Odysseus’s Scar” (from Mimesis). Kafka, “Josephine the Singer, or The Mouse Folk.”
Session 4 (October 22) chapters by Matan, Beiken and Brady and Hughes in Biderman and Lewit, Mediamorphosis plus film clips TBA
Session 5 (October 29) Shapiro, “Urban Punctuations” and “Streets” plus film footage from Ruttman’s Berlin Symphony of a Great City and Simonsson and Nilsson’s Sound of Noise
Session 6 (November 5) Shapiro, “How Popular Culture Thinks the Political” plus film footage from Spike Lee’s He Got Game and Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Batlle of Algiers
Session 7 (November 12) Shapiro, “Architectural Punctuations” plus film footage from Alfredson’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Hany Abu-Assad’s Omar
Session 8 (November 19) Shapiro, “Image Punctuations,” plus footage from Antonioni’s The Passenger
Session 9 (November 26) Peter Handke’s novel Slow Homecoming (recommended Milan Kundera’s novel Ignorance), parts of Shapiro “Holocaust Punctuations” and Chapter 5 “The Aesthetics of Disintegration” in Shapiro, Cinematic Geopolitics.
Session 10 (December 3) Imre Kertesz’s novel Fatelessness and more of Shapiro, “Holocaust Punctuations’
Session 11 (December 10) W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and the rest of Shapiro, “Holocaust Punctuations”
Session 12 (December 17) back to Kafka: readings from Metamorphosis and Minority Report and student-selected stories
Texts needed for the sessions (all others will be scanned and made available):
Kouba and Pivoda eds. Franz Kafka: Minority Report
Biderman and Lewit eds. Mediamorphosis
Handke, Slow Homecoming
Kertesz, Fatelessness
Sebald, Austerlitz
All of Kafka’s stories are available in English for free downloading at: https://www.vanderbilt.edu/olli/class-materials/Franz_Kafka.pdf
Annotation
In the perspective that shapes the seminar, punctuation consists of the intervening spaces, subjects, and objects that operate in artistic texts to shape the way the composition of the text delivers its political sensibility. In the register of language, punctuation is simply the part of grammar (notably the syntax) involved in shaping the way micro moments of deferral participate in linguistic and other forms of intelligibility.
While didactic approaches to punctuation focus on “proper use,” under the assumption that the writer or artist wants to communicate within the reigning structures of intelligibility, those interested in creative expression value punctuation for its expressive and critical artistic uses that challenge institutionalized forms of intelligibility. That latter orientation implies a need to expand the meaning of punctuation, treating it in an extended metaphorical sense as part of the way diverse, critically oriented artistic genres – in architecture, cinema, literature, music, painting, photography, and poetry – alternatively participate in and critique practices of intelligibility with rhythmic pacing that defers definitive closure and encourages critical reflection. As an homage to one of Prague’s most important literary figures, Franz Kafka, the seminar will begin with a session or two that focuses on a Kafka’s story “The Burrow,” along with a variety of commentaries on that story.
We will then proceed to other literary, visual, and aural texts that think politically through their form.