Assignment One: “the art of not being governed like that”
First Draft Due: Friday, February 6, at Midnight, via Email
Second Draft Due: Saturday, July 12, at Midnight, via Email
7 PAGES
Not including figures or works cited
Texts:
Foucault, Michel. Foucault, Michel. “What is Critique?” The Politics of Truth. Los Angeles, CA:
Semiotext(e), 2007. 41-81. Print.
Butler, Judith. “Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions.” The Judith Butler Reader Ed. Sarah
Salih with Judith Butler. Malden, Ma: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Print
Plus one institution or organization that enacts a regulatory function in society.
Formatting and Layout
Times New Roman
12-pt. font
One-inch margins double –spaced
MLA format with a works cited page
Goals of this Assignment:
We’re going to begin the class by engaging in cultural criticism. This practice can be pretty complex, but at its core it is simple. Basically, it just means that you look at a piece of culture (in this case an institution or organization) and say what you think about it.
It gets a little more complex because, as you say what you think, you need to take into account what other people think. In this case, you’ll be considering Foucault’s “What is critique?” and Judith Butler’s “Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions.” The goal, though, is to pull core concepts from these texts, adapt these concepts to your purposes, and then use them as you make your claims and offer your insights.
You have a unique position and cultural perspective. Taking into account Foucault and Butler, and your own experiences, decide what you think about your chosen institution. How does it seek to regulate or govern? How might things be done differently?
The Assignment:
Foucault argues that the role of the critic is to both question truth and challenge authority. This assignment asks you to do just that. Your task is to engageat least one of our unit texts and in order to develop an argument about how particular social institutions shape, regulate, and normalize social values. Your discussion should explore the extent to which a reading of Foucault, and/or Butler enables a ‘critical reading’ of your chosen institution and the principles it upholds.
As you broach this task it is essential to develop a constructive and conceptually useful reading of your chosen critical text(s). This means that you must take the time to come to terms with (engage, evaluate, and modify) the ideas presented by Foucault and/or Butler. Avoid simply describing the critical ideas… put them to work!
Step One: Complete the “coming to terms” warm up assignment. In this paper you are expected to engage our critical pieces in some depth, so it will be constructive to spend some time working through major ideas and arguments, before getting started with your own discussion.
Step Two:Identify an organization or institution that you would like to discuss in some depth. In making your choice, you might ask yourself what particular aspects of identity construction you are interested in. For instance, are you interested in issues of race, gender, or class? Spend some time brainstorming ideas about how your chosen institution performs a regulatory function. What is problematic (or indeed valuable) about the social role it performs? It may well be constructive to gather an archive of materials to aid you in your discussion. For instance, if you choose UConn as your institution, it would be a good idea to look at mission statements or codes of conduct in order to illustrate your major claims.
Step Three:I would like you to write a paper that both stakes out a claim about the institution of your choice and engages Foucault/Butler’s theories. You must develop your own theory about what is going on in your archive, why this is the case, and what that has to do with our critics. Do Foucault’s or Butler’s theories stand up when applied to your theory? Do they fall apart? How? And Why?
- In order to support your theory, you must “quote” or “close read” your own archive. This means you must refer us to the figures but also explain what you see and what it means.
- You will also develop a larger theory about how Foucault’s theories (several of them or just one) stack up against the material you’re viewing. Your theory should be your own, but it should respond to one or more of Foucault’s.
- Finally, this will lead you to consider the implications of your findings. If you are correct, what does this have to say about:
- Our theorists’ work?
- Our culture more broadly?
- Future treatment of individuals within our culture?
A note on Coming to terms:Engaging with the academic conversation begins by recognizing that we each have our own perspectives on a given issue, that are shaped by our own experiences and concerns. We are not neutral readers. Texts do not simply reveal their meaning to us, but rather, we make sense of texts through a process of close reading and interpretation. In coming to terms with a text you need to both give the text its due (be a generous reader) but also decide what uses you want to make of it.[1]
[1] For further reading, see: Joseph Harris. Rewriting: How To Do Things with Texts. " Logan: Utah State University Press, 2013.