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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : European Languages and Cultures - French

Undergraduate Course: Freud in France (Ordinary) (ELCF09025)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 9 (Year 3 Undergraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis option explores the impact of Freudian psychoanalysis on the work of a range of seminal French thinkers. At the outset students will be introduced to key Freudian concepts and their introduction into French culture. The course then investigates the Existentialist challenge to psychoanalysis, the "return to Freud" project of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and the uses of psychoanalytic thought for literary theory. We then move on to study the orientation given to Freudian thought in Foucault's and Althusser's history of ideas.

Course description Not entered
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Students MUST have passed: French 2 Literature and Culture (ELCF08012) AND French 2 Language (ELCF08013)
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements Ordinary Students and Visiting Students only
Additional Costs Purchase of primary texts
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesIn order to be eligible to take 4th Year Options, Visiting Students should have the equivalent of at least two years of study at University level of the appropriate language(s) and culture(s).
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. To demonstrate an advanced knowledge of a range of texts in their socio-historical and cultural contexts as well as a good understanding of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks needed to analyse them
  2. To select and apply relevant theoretical and methodological approaches in their critical evaluation of psychoanalytic, philosophical and political thought and texts, and to demonstrate mastery of relevant technical terminology and research methods
  3. To assess and synthesise primary and secondary sources and to engage critically with these sources, showing awareness of nuance and accommodating ambiguities
  4. To construct coherent arguments which engage effectively with the sources and the relevant contexts and to present them with a high level of clarity in both oral and written form
  5. To demonstrate autonomy and initiative in their activities, carry out independent research under the guidance of the tutor, and to show awareness of their own and others' roles and responsibilities as part of a team
Reading List
On Beauvoir
Mary Warnock The Philosophy of Sartre (London, Hutchinson University Library, 1965)
Kathleen Wider Bodily nature of consciousness (London, Cornell University Press, 1997)
Christina Howells Sartre: the necessity of freedom (Cambridge University Press, 1988)
Ed. Melanie Hawthorne Contingent loves: Simone de Beauvoir and sexuality (Charlottesville; London, Viking Press, 2000)
Margaret Simons Beauvoir and the second sex: feminism, race and the origins of existentialism (Oxford, Rowan and Littlefield publishers, 1999)
Françoise Rétif Simone de Beauvoir: L'autre en miroir (Paris, L'Harmattan, 1998)
Genevieve Shepherd Simone de Beauvoir's fiction: a psychoanalytic rereading (Oxford, Peter Lang, 2003)

On Lacan
Benvenuto and Kennedy The works of Jacques Lacan, an introduction (London, Free Association Books, 1986)
Malcolm Bowie Lacan (Cambridge and London, Harvard University Press, 1991)
Ed. Smith and Kerrigan Interpreting Lacan (Yale University Press, 1984)
Katharine Swarbrick Lacan and the Uses of Iconoclasm (Stirling French Publications,1999)
Joël Dor Introduction à la lecture de Lacan (Paris, Denoël, 1987)
Darian Leader Lacan for beginners (Cambridge, Icon Books, 1995)

On Barthes
Michael Moriarty Roland Barthes (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991)
Sean Burke The death and return of the author: criticism of subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault, Derrida (Edinburgh University Press, 1998)
Jonathon Culler Barthes (Glasgow; London, Fontana 1983)
Stephen Heath Vertige du déplacement: lecture de Barthes (Paris, Fayard, 1974)
Rick Rylance Roland Barthes (New York; London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994)
Ed. Diana Knight Roland Barthes (Nottingham French studies vol. 36 no. 1 spring
1997)

On Foucault
Geoff Danacher Understanding Foucault (London, Sage, 2000)
A.W. McHoul A Foucault primer: discourse, power and the subject (Melbourne University Press 1995)
J.G. Merquior Foucault (Fontana 1985)
Joseph Bristow Sexualiy (London, Routledge New Critical Idiom, 1997)
Judith Butler Gender Trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity (New York, Routledge, 1990)
Jonathan Dollimore Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault (Oxford University Press, 1991)

On Althusser
Miriam Gluckesmann Structuralist analysis in contemporary social thought: a comparison of the theories of Claude Levi-Strauss and Louis Althusser (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974)
William Dowling Jameson, Althusser, Marx: an introduction to the political unconscious (Ithaca, Cornell University press, 1984)
Ed. Gregory Elliot Althusser, a critical reader (Oxford, Blackwell, 1994)

For structuralist authors see:

Ed. Sturrock Structuralism and since (Oxford University press, 1979)

For Freud see The Penguin Freud Library :
Introductory Lectures, vol 1 Pelican)
The Interpretation of Dreams (vol 4)
On Sexuality (vol 7)
"Femininity", New Introductory Lectures (vol. 2 pp.145-169)
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills By the end of the course, students will have further developed their skills in the areas of research and enquiry, personal and intellectual autonomy, communication, and personal effectiveness. For further specification of these skills see the university¿s graduate and employability skills framework at http://www.employability.ed.ac.uk/documents/GAFramework+Interpretation.pdf
KeywordsDELC O Freud in France Psychoanalysis Structuralism Existentialism
Contacts
Course organiserDr Katharine Swarbrick
Tel: (0131 6)50 8415
Email: Kath.Swarbrick@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMrs Elsie Gach
Tel: (0131 6)50 8421
Email: Elsie.Gach@ed.ac.uk
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