CSLC 235 Grotesque Bodies, Eccentric Minds: Carnival Perversions from Gogol to Zizek
Plato thought that all we need is a philosopher-king. What if he was only partially right, and what we actually need is a philosopher-buffoon? Jokes aside, what if critical thinking needs to be accompanied by laughter? And not just any laughter, but the kind that, following Mikhail Bakhtin, one would call carnivalesque.
Carnival laughter exposes the grotesque aspect of human bodies—everything that is “ugly, monstrous, hideous from the point of view of ‘classic’ aesthetics” of the ready-made and the completed. It liberates an individual body by revealing the ways it is open to the world around it—by emphasizing a body’s orifices and protruding parts. This laughter also revives and refreshes thinking by ridiculing—without destroying—the strict laws of rationality. Carnivalesque laughter is irreverent; it crosses the lines of what is socially, politically, and morally acceptable, and in so doing reveals the connections between myself and other beings.
Bakhtin will provide the main theoretical framework for the course that will bring together literature and philosophy of Eastern Europe—the works of Gogol, Zizek, Andrukhovych, and others—to explore (and pervert?) the claims made above.
This course meets the Core Program Regional Focus (CPRF) Requirement.