Elective

CLIT7007 The Art and Politics of Narrative

If narrative is to do with storytelling, this course focuses on the art and politics of storytelling. What underpins the central focus of the course is the complex relation among representations of identity, ideology, history, and human agency. The course examines a variety of narratives across a range of cultures, genres, and media including poems, short stories, plays and films, and it introduces ways of reading them from theoretical, philosophical and cultural perspectives. Students will learn to read narratives within their historical and cultural context with the help of Marxism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, and feminism. They will study how narratives function to contest, challenge and transcend various forms of cultural identity constructed by nationalism, state ideology, patriarchy, orientalism, occidentalism, capitalism and urbanism. Selections of narratives may range from the realist modes to surrealism and fantasy. With the former, fundamental issues such as mimesis, reality and alienation effects, as well as the political unconscious will be tackled whereas in the latter, innovative ways of contestation are produced when imagination goes on exile.