Rhetoric of the Modern 1

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Name of lecturer(s):

Learning outcomes of the course unit:

Under the title „Rhetoric of Modernity,“ I wish to gradually analyse genres and figures of hegemonic discourse which have emerged from the history of the modern as a resolution of the split it brought. From the hegemonic genres and rhetoric figures they derive their authority of brotherhood and parties of the authorized (model) interpreters of the historic world. Their power coalition canonized a certain discursive formatin and regime of language securing for them a protection of the discursive policy and attempts to expand it. From their various historical configurations we can derive a typology of national cultures, for ex; German „Rhetoric of Modernity“ bears a nostalgia for the community, radical critique, „a technical civilazation and economic rationality“ in the name of „fated, unique, historical society“. France in contrast bears a rhetoric of anxiety from the provinces and trust in a rationalized power center, source of the purpose of history. British marks the ability to legitimize changes in the foundations of proportion in maintaining form, etc. What „brotherhood of model interpreters“ determines Czech national culture? The contemporary phase of globalization is marked by mass identity panic, this provokes in each European country a „discursive return to identity“ - figures and genres of this rhetoric are, in Czech public space very influential.

Mode of study:

Lectures and final course module.

Prerequisites and co-requisites:

On-going readings of recommended texts, documents and papers during the course.

Recommended optional programme components:

Course contents:

Analysis of individual examples of hegemonic discourses and their manifestations.

We attempt to analyse key figures of modern discourse. such as: The state is a machine which is handling religious wars, Rhetoric of subjectivity which is a histerical reaction to the end of geocentrism (science has driven man from the center of the cosmos to the periphery of the Milky Way but everything has to start over again from „Cogito ergo sum“, from human self-awareness, self-experience): Rhetoric of unseen hands which legitimize behaviour motivated by enjoyment, acquisition (self-interest): Allegory of societal contracts which take authority of human decision from a natural state and give part of their rights to the government, Metaphor of nature as a book written in a mathematical language, created by Galileo.

These metaphors have generated a new discourse hegemony, a new regime of words, new vocabulary, new canon and new definitions in the differences of reality-appearances, society-individual, center-periphery, which has become a source of legitimacy for various phases of the industrial modern. I wish to analyse systematically the canonic writings in rhetoric in which is constituted modern nostalgia after pospolity, the battle with „anonymity“ as the mai threat to modern society, fear from the rationalization (beaurocratization) as an iron cage in there is no escape, unavoidable ogligarchization of all collective events (Michels). Fear of the outcomes of revolts of the masses, secularization and maximalization of numbers. Also key figures of the 1960s and late moderism such as the tetrad of M. McLuhan and other figures of his revolutionary concept of the media, forms of pastoral power in the modern state (Foucault). The single dimensional man. (Marcuse), Fluid Modernity (Bauman), Empty society, in which the process of individualization has no limits. Cultural Narcism. The metaphor of the contemporary growth of pairs on ice which leads to the unending conflict of globalization (Offe) or the attempt of Habermas to derive rational ethics from implicit political and social conditions of effective communications.

Recommended or required reading:

The literature for the course will be determined during group work. Important for us are excerpts from the works of Bauman, Lipovetsky, Beck and my Society of Sickness (second edition) and excerpts from recent works of M. Petrusek group. An important part of the course will the interpretation of selected documentaries or films in a context of hegemonic discursive formations.

Planned learning activities and teaching methods:

Lectures begin on the 6th of October, 2011 and will continue with occasional short interruptions, throughout the semester with a final module summary according to agreement.

Assessment methods and criteria:

Course paper and colloquium according to experience from the course.

Course web page:

Note:

Further information:

No schedule has been prepared for this course

The subject is a part of the following study plans:

• Animovaná tvorba - bakalář (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Dokumentární tvorba - magistr (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Dokumentární tvorba - bakalář (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Animovaná tvorba - magistr (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Scenáristika a dramaturgie - bakalář (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Scenáristika a dramaturgie - magistr (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Režie - bakalář (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Režie - magistr (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Kamera - bakalář (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Kamera - magistr (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Produkce - bakalář (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Produkce - magistr (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Audiovizuální studia - bakalář (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Střihová skladba - bakalář (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Střihová skladba - magistr (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Zvuková tvorba - bakalář (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Zvuková tvorba - magistr (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Fotografie CZ - bakalář (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Fotografie CZ - magistr (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Audiovizuální studia - magistr (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Fotografie CZ: Restaurování fotografie (faculty subject, optional subject)