Outside the Text

Today in class we will be watching Derrida.

Final Alternative Media Project

Your final project for this class is to translate one of your previous two papers into an alternative media.

Your aim is to express in this new medium your thesis from one of your two papers and to capture in some form other than writing its arguments, discussion, and conclusions. It might be drawings, video, paint, performance art, web pages, photographs, dance, music, theater, cooking, landscaping, cartoons, sculpture or any other media you can imagine other than writing (or simply reading what you have written). Where appropriate, you may wish to collaborate with a small group of your classmates.

You will present your translated paper to the class for discussion during our regularly scheduled final exam period: Friday, December 8, 3:00-5:30 p.m.

You must also hand in the original, graded copy of the paper you are working from on the day of the presentation.

You will be graded on the quality and originality of your creation as well as on its connections with your original paper and thesis.

Be bold. Be creative. Be clear.

Second Paper Topics

Write a well written, well argued paper on any one of the topics below. Your paper is due by the end of class time, Tuesday, 11/28, in my box in LLA 111. Late papers will be docked one-third of a letter grade for each day late. Feel free to make full use of the Writing Center in 008 Belk Library.

Your paper should be typed, double-spaced in a 12-point font with standard margins.
It should be a minimum of 3 full pages and a maximum of 5 pages in length.
There should be a cover page including an original and informative title for your paper, your name, this course, my name and the date.
There should be a bibliography with MLA references for any works cited in the paper.
Papers should be stapled in the upper left-hand corner. No binders or folders please.
Pages should be numbered.
Keep a copy of your paper.

1. Compare and contrast Trinh’s writing about writing with Velazquez’s painting about painting as discussed in Foucault’s “Las Meninas.” For Trinh, what political issues hinge on these issues of representation and its limitations? How might these political issues be relevant to writings from within your own concentration/discipline/major/minor? Explain.

2. Write yourself. Making explicit use of Trinh, “write yourself” in three to five pages (Trinh 28). How is this project different from simply “writing about yourself” for Trinh? Explain it at the same time as you do it.

3. Trinh writes: "Anthropology is finally better defined as 'gossip' (we speak together about others) than as 'conversation' (we discuss a question)" and that "a conversation of 'us' with 'us' about 'them' is a conversation in which 'them' is silenced" (68, 67). Do you think Trinh is correct in her assessment of Anthropology as a kind of gossip? How much of your own field of study could be characterized as gossip in a similar way? Does it matter for your field if some of the production of knowledge that takes place is in the form of gossip or not? Why or why not? Explain and give an argument for your view. In this context, some of you may wish to explore Donna Haraway's remark in her article "Situated Knowledges" that: "Acknowledging the agency of the world in knowledge makes room for some unsettling possibilities, including a sense of the world's independent sense of humour. Such a sense of humour is not comfortable for humanists and others committed to the world as resource. Richly evocative figures exist for feminist visualizations of the world as witty agent."

4. Come up with a topic of your own. Write down your idea in the form of a brief thesis statement, then come and discuss your proposal with me by Monday, 11/20. If you wish to write on a topic of your own, you must talk with me first.

First Paper Topics

Write a well written, well argued paper on any one of the topics below. Your paper is due by 3:15, Tuesday, 10/31, in my box in LLA 111. Late papers will be docked one-third of a letter grade for each day late. Feel free to make full use of the Writing Center in 008 Belk Library.

Your paper should be typed, double-spaced in a 12-point font with standard margins.
It should be a minimum of 3 full pages and a maximum of 5 pages in length.
There should be a cover page including an original and informative title for your paper, your name, this course, my name and the date.
There should be a bibliography with MLA references for any works cited in the paper.
Papers should be stapled in the upper left-hand corner. No binders or folders please.
Pages should be numbered.
Keep a copy of your paper.

1. The title of this course, "Histories of Knowledges," may itself contain several histories of knowledges. Using both Whorf and Motokawa, what different and competing histories of knowledges can you extract from this title? In Whorf, you may want to explain and discuss his exposition of mass nouns in SAE and Hopi. In Motokawa, you may want to explain and discuss his views on the word/fact dichotomy in both the East and the West. Given your discussion, can you suggest another, better title for this course, or are titles ultimately not important? Why or why not?

2. In his “Discourse on Language,” Foucault writes about rules of exclusion, both external and internal, through which discourse is “controlled, selected, organised and redistributed.” Haraway writes, "Siting (sighting) boundaries is a risky practice." Using both Foucault and Haraway, give one or two specific examples of the ways in which the discourse of your own concentration is regulated and bounded. For both Foucault and Haraway, these boundaries and exclusions cannot be completely escaped, and in fact are even necessary in certain ways. Do you think that is true in your field of study? Explain both Foucault and Haraway, as well as your own view, on this topic.

3. Donna Haraway writes, "only partial perspective promises objective vision." How might you apply Haraway's call for partial perspective and situated knowledges as a way of avoiding the twin pitfalls of easy relativism or totalizing claims of universality to your own major concentration? Pick one specific aspect, area, example, issue, focus, or topic from within your concentration and use it to illustrate how you might use Haraway to construct and explore one specific situated knowledge within your concentration. Be specific in both your choice of examples and its connection to Haraway.

4. Come up with a topic of your own. Write down your idea in the form of a brief thesis statement, then come and discuss your proposal with me by Thursday, 10/26. If you wish to write on a topic of your own, you must talk with me first.

Wittgenstein Review

Below is a list of some of the terms and ideas we have been studying. This list is intended only as a starting point for your study, not as a comprehensive guide.

Saint Augustine (1)
shopkeeper example (1)
builder language example (2 ff)
“to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life” (19)
language games (7)
meaning as use (43)
family resemblance (67)
arguments against words as names of objects (e.g 27)
“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” (109-123)
relationship between thought and language (327-341)
teapot example (297)
“beetle” example (293)
“understanding” (150-155)
“pain” (246 ff)
arguments against solipsism (e.g. 24)
arguments against private language (269 ff)
Other comparisons between Wittgenstein’s views on language and knowledge and those of Plato, Descartes, John Wilkins, and Foucault are also possible.

Games

Our List of Games:

Monopoly
Risk
Jenga
Poker
Hopscotch
Ring o' round the rosey
Red rover
Life
Ping Pong/Table Tennis
Operation
Zelda
Super Mario Brothers
Tetris

As far as what constitues what a "game " is:
1) It must involve some minor concentration.
2) People (players) must be involved.
3) They are designed for pleasure.

Adam, Leah, Mark, Meredith

"Games"

Tamara Boozell, Brandon Miller, Walter Murray, Adrian Tambor

1. Four Square
2. Shoots and Ladders
3. Soccer
4. Puzzles
5. Bingo
6. Solitare
7. Tether Ball
8. Football
9. Golf
10. Ultimate

***There is a goal to be achieved, and an option of succeeding or not succeeding as defined by our culture. Games have a family, as Wittgenstein puts it, of usage. ***