W4 Lecture **
SLIDES NOTES
1 -conceptual foundations, First unit.
Genre
2 Associated with deconstuction - a practice a way of
Introducing reading exploring concepts that are seen as natural and
Derrida (1930- show how they are constructed, made by humans and
2004) - and the culture.
concept of Wrote about french philosopher Rouse
genre Reading a range of texts to explore some hidden
assumptions they make, and what they assume to be
natural and non-questioning
Born in Algeria to saphadic Jewish family, decedent from
the jews expelled from Spain and Portugal - been in north
Africa for centuries and after the colonisation of France,
after that all jews there were granted French citizenship.
Excluded from school in ww2 cuz Algeria came under Nazi
rule:
3 "... They expelled from the Lycee de Ben Aknoun in 1942 a little black
Generic and very Arab Jew who understood nothing about it..." Jacques
mixedness Derrida & Geoff Bennington Jacques Derrida /
Cirumfessions (trans Geoff Bennington) U of Chicago Press
1993, p. 58
When we sort things into types and kinds and then
value one over the other, he implies that we are
basically doing the same as the nazi's.
It is the root of racism and antisemitism
He is testifying to the hybrid of his own identity in
the quote.
4
Etemology of
'genre' (From Etymology: < Anglo-Norman and Middle
OED) French gender (Anglo-Norman and Middle
French, French genre ) kind, sort (c1125 in Old
French), sex, quality of being male or female
(second half of the 12th cent.; now obsolete),
race, people (c1200, originally and chiefly in
Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle
French humain genre , Middle French,
French genre humain ‘mankind’; second
quarter of the 13th cent. used independently;
, obsolete after 1660), (in grammar) class of
nouns and pronouns distinguished by different
inflections (c1225) < classical
Latin gener- , genus race, kind, also
grammatical gender (see genus n.).
< Latin genus, -eris, birth, race, stock, kind,
genus = Greek γένος , -εος (same meanings),
Sanskrit jánas , < Aryan root *gen- to beget,
produce, be born:
Also linked to genesis and genitals
The word for genre and gender in French is
the same, depending on context.
A word linked to generations and interlinked
kinds
Words straddle the nature culture divide - in
English
When we say some meanings of the word
genre are natural and some a cultural > that
itself is a genre distinction in of itself > even
the langauge we use is steeped in assumption
of the natural.
5 The bodies of thought the essay is drawing on:
The Law of
genre
6 1. Structuralism - an approuch to literary and cultural texts
Context for 'the and anthropological phenomena, which sought to discern
law of genre' their underlying structures and (often) to identify certain
key types or kinds. Proponents include Vladimir Propp
(who analysed the basic structural elements of Russian
folk tales) and Gerald Genette (mentioned on p59) who
was interested in the underlying 'units' of narrative. > sort
to identify the under pinning’s of a text, used to be
popular in lit studies; often did so to identify types and
kinds
2. Set theory - the branch of mathematical logic which
studies objects as members of sets. Initiated by Georg
Cantor and Richard Dedekind.