Notes for 18 February 2016

LITCS 114
Teaching Associate: Patrick Mooney
Bldg. 494, room 160B
Winter 2016

• Admin concerns? Questions?
  • How's everyone doing? Where are you? What do you need? How can I support you?
  • Remember that you should have 2 comments on other people's blog posts before midnight on Saturday.
• The Left Hand of Darkness
  • Talk to me about your reactions to the novel: horror? approval? fascination? revulsion? All of the above?
    • College literature classes are more than Oprah's book club: we're not just sitting around talking about our feelings here. What are the benefits of paying attention to our own reactions? How does it provide insight into our own writing processes?
    • What, specifically, motivates these reactions? What do we react this way to the removal or alteration of such a basic presupposition as gender?
    • How does this connect to our previous discussions about boundaries, about presuppositions, about ideology, about horror theory?
  • In what ways can you use Agamben to illuminate this novel? What about Butler?
  • Following up on our conversation from last week: do you still think this is a feminist novel?
    • In what ways? How can this be a feminist novel without representing women?
    • What kind of a critique does it offer? How is this critique related to gender? To other existing power structures?
  • What is different on Gethen? What is missing? What is available on Gethen that isn't available to us?
  • Is this a Utopian novel? Does it fit into the the tradition of the feminist Utopia?
• Today's whiteboard snapshots
  • Agambenian concerns in The Left Hand of Darkness
  • What (else) is Gethen missing?
  • What does Gethen have that we don't?