Studies in the 19th Century
Fetishism and (Mostly) Nineteenth-Century Narrative
Taking the theoretical narratives of Freud and Marx as a starting point, this course will examine the links and tensions between Marxian commodity fetishism and Freudian fetishism as they manifest themselves in (mostly) late nineteenth-century literary narrative. Questions to be addressed will include: the function of detail in realist texts; the gendering of fetishism as a “male perversion” and the possibility of a “female fetishism”; fetishism as a logic that subverts or, alternately, underlies the constitution of sexual difference; the structure of disavowal as a model for understanding Aideological fantasy; fetishism as rhetorical mode.
Readings will include theoretical texts by Marx, Freud, Agamben, Bhabha, Deleuze, Grosz, Kofman, Mannoni, Pietz, Schor, Žižek, and others; literary texts will include Balzac (La fille aux yeux d’or). Flaubert (Salammbô and Hérodias),Wilde (Salomé), Rachilde (La jongleuse), Sacher-Masoch (Venus in Furs), D’Annunzio (Gioconda and The Victim), Rider Haggard (She), Radclyffe Hall (The Well of Loneliness) and James (“The Aspern Papers”).