University of Southern California



COLT 381: Psychoanalysis and the Arts

Fall 2008: Wednesdays, 3:30 to 6:20 p.m., THH 213, Class #22039R

Professor Peter Starr

Office: THH 278, Phone: 740-3170, pstarr@usc.edu

In his 1963 essay on “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” historian Richard Hofstadter speaks of the “paranoid style” as an “old and recurrent” mode of American public expression, marked by “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” Those who mine this deep rhetorical tradition, he suggests, differ from clinical paranoids since they see the “hostile and conspiratorial world” not as directed against them, but against “a nation, a culture, a way of life”. “It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people,” Hofstadter argues, “that makes the phenomenon significant.”

The aim of this iteration of “Psychoanalysis and the Arts” is to examine how ‘our’ paranoid style—the paranoid style of late 20th- and early 21st-century America—does and does not differ from what which Hofstadter wrote about in the early 1960s. How has recent conspiracy culture been shaped by the postwar rise of a national security state, the rapid mediatization of our political life, the development of new modes of networked sociability, or the increasing power and ubiquity of surveillance technology? What role have such traumatic events as the Kennedy assassination or the 9/11 attacks played in shaping that culture? To what extent is our ambient paranoia a response to the strikingly unlocalizable nature of modern socio-political power, ‘embodied’ as it is in faceless corporations, functionally replaceable leaders, and complex distributed systems (like the global economy or the Internet)?

In the first several weeks of the semester, we will examine a series of important attempts to theorize paranoia in both its clinical and cultural forms (by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Richard Hofstadter, and David Shapiro). This will be followed by analysis of four accounts of the seeming facelessness of modern socio-political power (by Michel Foucault, Fredric Jameson, Kevin Kelly and Slavoj Žižek). Over the course of the semester, we will engage in the close analysis of specific cultural artifacts, including a novel—Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49—and such films as Conspiracy Theory, Loose Change, Dr. Strangelove, Brazil, The Truman Show, The Matrix, the Bourne trilogy and JFK.

This course is offered under the Multimedia Across the College program. In lieu of a final paper, students will produce a multimedia essay, due on December 3rd, on a topic to be determined in consultation with me. Especially successful multimedia essays will be posted, with your permission, on the community space of the We the Paranoid website (currently at ). The requirements for this course also include three short (1-2 page) response papers, on the broad topics listed below and due in class on September 10th, September 24th and October 15th.

In addition to this written work, each student will be expected to participate significantly and imaginatively in the classroom dialogue. 'Imaginative' participation means more than simply completing each day's assignments before class and bringing the appropriate text(s) with you; it means knowing how to reread. Several of the texts and films we will be studying are in fact quite difficult, of the sort that only begins to come clear on a second reading or viewing. Do give them the care they deserve.

Any student requesting academic accommodations based on a disability is required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP. Please be sure the letter is delivered to me as early in the semester as possible. DSP is located in STU 301 and is open 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. The phone number for DSP is (213) 740-0776.

Required Texts

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Volume One, An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon, 1978.

Freud, Sigmund. The Schreber Case. Ed. Colin McCabe. Trans. Andrew Webber. London: Penguin, 2003.

Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 2004.

Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. New York: Harper & Row, 1986 [1966].

Texts marked “BB” on the following syllabus will be found in our course’s BlackBoard site. Assignments marked “WTP” are on the We the Paranoid draft site (URL above). Film titles are distinguished below by the inclusion of the film’s date of original release and, unless otherwise noted, are available for checkout at the Leavey Library reserve desk. Lab sessions are designated in italics below.

Class Schedule

August 27 Course Introduction

WTP Videos #1-3

Excerpts from Richard Donner, Conspiracy Theory (1997)

Introduction to Adobe Premiere (lab @ 4:30; THH B6)

September 3 Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” (BB)

David Shapiro, “Paranoid Style” (BB)

WTP Sections 1.1-1.3; 2.1; 2.3

Loose Change: Second Edition (2006), available at: .

videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501

September 10 Sigmund Freud, The Schreber Case

WTP Video #10

Response Paper #1 Due: Ethics

September 17 Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function,

as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience” (BB)

---. “Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis” (BB)

WTP Sections 3.2-3.3

Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop

Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

September 24 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, pp. 3-102

---. “The Eye of Power” (BB)

WTP Videos #4-5

Response Paper #2 Due: Naming Power

October 1 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, pp. 103-159

Terry Gilliam, Brazil (1985)

Research & Audio Techniques Workshop (lab @ 4:30; THH B6)

October 8 Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt, “The All-Seer: God’s Eye as Proto-

Surveillance” (BB)

Peter Weibel, “Pleasure and the Panoptic Principle” (BB)

Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on Control Societies” (BB)

Thomas Y. Levin, “Rhetoric of the Temporal Index: Surveillant

Narration and the Cinema of ‘Real Time’” (BB)

Peter Weir, The Truman Show (1999)

October 15 Kevin Kelly, Out of Control, pp. 1-56, 69-90, 111-127, 184-202,

450-472.

WTP Videos #7 & 11; Sections 4.4 & 4.5

Response Paper #3 Due: The Medium is the Message

October 22 Theodore Adorno, “Culture Industry Reconsidered,” available at



Culture_industry_reconsidered.shtml

WTP Video #9

Multimedia Argumentation Workshop (lab @ 4:30; THH B6)

Draft of Final Project Script Due

October 29 Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late

Capitalism” (BB)

WTP Video #6

Wachowski Bros., The Matrix (1999)

November 5 Doug Liman, The Bourne Identity (2002)

Paul Greengrass, The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

---. The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

Final Project Script Due

November 12 Slavoj Žižek, “Much Ado About a Thing” (BB)

WTP Video #8; Sections 4.9 & 4.10

Oliver Stone, JFK (1991)

November 19 Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, pp. 9-99

Draft of Final Project Video Due

November 26 Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, pp. 100-183.

December 3 Course Summary and Class Presentations

Final Project Video Due

Office Hours

Wednesday 2:00-3:30

Friday 1:00-2:00

(or by appointment)

THH 278

N.B. These hours are subject to change. If you’d like to come in, please send me an email at pstarr@usc.edu.

Grading Criteria

Participation 40%

Final Project 40%

Response Papers 20%

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