Checking date: 26/04/2024


Course: 2024/2025

Narratives of Identity
(15411)
Master in Cultural Theory and Critique (Plan: 356 - Estudio: 253)
EPH


Coordinating teacher: CONTE IMBERT, DAVID

Department assigned to the subject: Humanities: Philosophy, Language, Literature Theory Department

Type: Electives
ECTS Credits: 6.0 ECTS

Course:
Semester:




Objectives
Introduction to narrative studies, linked to identity, through the knowledge of its main texts and currents. Specifically, the following competences will be developed: - Knowledge of the main currents and cases in which forms of identity (personal and collective) are expressed narratively. - To know and understand the main theoretical currents and cases in which the forms of identity, personal and collective, are expressed narratively. - To acquire a general knowledge of narrativity studies through the knowledge of their texts and the different perspectives with which they have been approached. - To be able to analyze and critically judge the debates present in the currents that approach the study of identity. - To know the relevant bibliography on the subject. - To grasp the notion of narrative identity as an architect of identity configuration. - To understand the anthropological dimensions of identity throughout history and its contemporary connotations. - To be able to employ oral and written methods of study and criticism. -To be able to elaborate academic texts related to the subject. - As a result of learning, the student will know the main problems involved in the narratives that have identity as a central content, as well as the theories that have dealt with them, will have the conceptual and methodological tools to address them, will be able to handle the bibliography on the subject and to prepare a short paper on the issues involved in the subject with the relevant academic and conceptual rigor.
Skills and learning outcomes
Description of contents: programme
Based on the concepts of narrative and identity, the course outlines a panorama in which narrative, mainly literary but also cinematographic, is approached as an embodiment of recognizable identity paradigms, taking into account not only its enunciation devices but also considerations of reception and hermeneutics. This course presents the ways in which the relationships between identity, difference and otherness are represented in various literary genres (narrative, drama) and in other practices of cultural and visual representation. Identity as a nuclear concept of contemporary culture has dimensions in various ontological orders that range from the individual to the social, from the real to the imaginary, from the structural to the contingent and historical. The program develops these aspects with the objective of familiarizing the student with an interpretative concept of the dynamics and paradigms that continue to act as constituent processes of our societies, and as conditioners of the assumption, development and de-automatization of individual identity. To this end, the course will show different narrative archetypes, which delve into recognizable facets of identity and its contradictions, with narrative (both individual and collective) being one of the main mechanisms of its increasingly fragmentary configuration. Introduction to the concepts of narrative and identity. 2. The double: primordial splitting of identity I 3. Discussion of Paul Ricoeur's concept of identity and narrativity. 4. The double: primordial splitting of the identity I 5. The Proustian quest and the temporal dimension of the contemporary subject. 6. Proustian conception of love and jealousy in its dimension of identity creation. 8. Teratology of identity: the monster 9. Concept of the monster in fiction 10. Introduction to the concepts of myth and archetype. 11. Myths of contemporaneity 12. The subject without attributes: the impossible annulment of the self in Samuel Beckett. 13. Limits and possibilities of sexed identity. The vision of Ursula K. Le Guin's vision 14. Disease and contagion 15. Love and illness: the intransitive subject
Learning activities and methodology
Discussion of relevant texts on the contents of the subject. Presentations by the teachers of the general contents and the texts indicated and discussion with the students to verify their understanding and for the indication of the fields of problems that they imply, as well as of the instruments that can be used in it. Oral presentations by the students and discussions. There will be assigned hours for individual tutoring, which may be complemented throughout the course with some joint tutoring for the whole group.
Assessment System
  • % end-of-term-examination 60
  • % of continuous assessment (assigments, laboratory, practicals...) 40




Basic Bibliography
  • Anderson, B. Comunidades imaginadas. Fondo de Cultura Económica.
  • Bringhurst, Robert. "El cuervo roba la luz" en Cuentos del cuervo. Mitos y leyendas de los indios haida. Hiperión. 1984
  • Butler, J.. Giving an account of oneself. Fordham U.P.
  • Conrad, Joseph. "El partícipe secreto", en Molina Foix, Juan Antonio (ed.) Alter ego. Cuentos de dobles (una antología". Siruela. 2007
  • Cortázar, Julio. "Lejana", en Bestiario. Alfaguara. 2017
  • Foucault, M. La hermenéutica del sujeto. Fondo de Cultura Económica.
  • Hughes, Ted. Cuervo. Hiperión. 1999
  • Meruane, Lina. Sangre en el ojo. Caballo de Troya. 2021
  • Ricoeur. Sí mismo como otro. Siglo XXI.
  • Schweblin, Samantha. Distancia de rescate. Penguin Random House. 2014
  • Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein anotado. Akal. 2018
  • Taylor, Ch.. Las fuentes del yo. La construcción de la identidad moderna. Paidós.
  • Williams, B.. Verdad y veracidad. Tusquets.
Additional Bibliography
  • Agamben, Giorgio. Identidad sin persona. Adriana Hidalgo. 2011
  • Agamben, Giorgio. Estancias. Pre-textos. 2016
  • Atkins, K, (ed). Self and subjectivity. Oxford University Press.
  • Bartra, Roger. La melancolía moderna. Pre-textos. 2017
  • Beard, Mary. Mujeres y poder. Crítica. 2008
  • Broyard, Anatole. Ebrio de enfermedad. La uña rota. 1992
  • Butler, Judith. El género en disputa. El feminismo y la subversión de la identidad. Paidós. 2007
  • Cavell Marcia. Becoming a subject. Clarendon.
  • Eliade, Mircea. Mefistófeles y el andrógino. Kairós. 1965
  • Eliade, Mircea. Aspectos del mito. Paidós. 2000
  • Hutto, D.. Folk psychological narratives. MIT Press.
  • Jung, Carl Gustav. "Sobre la psicología del inconsciente" en Dos escritos sobre psicología. Trotta. 2007
  • Klibansky, Panofsky y Saxl. Saturno y la melancolía. Alianza. 1991
  • Meruane, Lina. Viajes virales. F.C.E.. 2021
  • Nash, Ch.. Narrative in culture. Routledge.
  • Paré, Ambroise. Monstruos y prodigios. Siruela. 1987
  • Rank, Otto. El doble. Orión. 1978
  • Sartre, P.. El ser y la nada. Alianza Editorial.
  • Snyder, Gary. La práctica de lo salvaje. Varasek. 2016
  • Sontag, Susan. La enfermedad y sus metáforas. Taurus. 1996
  • Taylor, Chloe. The culture of confession from Augustine to Foucault. Routledge.
  • Woolf, Virginia. De la enfermedad. Crítica. 2008

The course syllabus may change due academic events or other reasons.