Reading & Composition

Under the regime of idleness, to kill the time, which kills
us second by second, there will be shows and theatrical
performances always and always. 
—Paul Lafargue, “The Right to Be Lazy” (1883)
Was ever idleness like this?
—Emily Dickinson
Nothing to be done.
—Estragon, Waiting for Godot

What right do we have to stay in bed? To laze about in the heat of the day? What is the relationship between loafing and literary production? Following Kathi Weeks’ suggestion that the legacy of the Protestant work ethic “generates…lines of flight,” this course tracks the diversions and detours by which artists and authors have insisted on not keeping busy. Beginning with Virgil’s world-weary shepherd-poets, we’ll go on to read about Shakespearean vagabonds and Victorian slackers, women who wander away from domestic obligation and kids who practice the art of otium. Alongside literature and film, we’ll dip into a selection of theoretical texts that think about how repeated refusals to work can discover new subjectivities under capitalism. What forms of play—linguistic and gestural—are developed when we withhold our labors? How do such forms resist and remake the world? And how do these questions change in light of contemporary experiences of pandemic, when so many people are working and not working “in place”? Our investigation will be shaped by practice: the course’s emphasis is on reading and rereading, writing and re-writing. Thus assignments will be aimed at developing students’ powers of description, analysis, and argumentation. They will include one critical analysis and a longer research paper, a mid-term presentation, and numerous short writing assignments.

Possible Course Texts:
Poetry by Virgil, Catullus Arthur Rimbaud, Emily Dickinson, Andrew Marvell, Bernadette Mayer, Eirik Steinhoff, Jean Day;
Essays by Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Michel de Certeau, Paul Lafargue, Karl Marx, Michel de Montaigne, and Kathi Weeks;

Fiction & Drama & Film to be selected from the following:

William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part One
Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener”
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Clarice Lispector, selected short stories
Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and “Odradek”
Agnès Varda, Vagabond
Spike Lee, Do The Right Thing
Boots Riley, Sorry to Bother You