| Instructor: Dr. Jeff Webb |
Topical Introduction | Rhetorical
Introduction | Unit 1 | Unit
2 | Unit 3
"Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks,
hospitals, which all resemble prisons?"
-- Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
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Petronas Towers, Kuala Lampur
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Do certain kinds of social life prohibit true individuality? Many thinkers--ranging
from the Greek philosopher Plato to the German political economist Karl Marx--have
answered this question affirmatively. Our objective in this course will be to
assess the reasoning behind their views and to arrive at conclusions of our
own. We will start by considering the works of two widely influential philosophers
of ideal selfhood: Plato and Rene Descartes, the sixteenth century French philosopher
and mathematician. The rest of the course will be devoted to understanding the
fate of these idealisms in intellectual history, particularly in the context
of an entirely new phenomenon in human experience that appeared in the mid nineteenth
century: the modern metropolis. Before the nineteenth century, people had never
lived in such close quarters in such numbers. How did this new experience affect
the way people thought about the nature of the self? How does it affect the
way we think now at beginning of the 21st century? Does urban life
stifle or enhance selfhood? Or is this even the right way of framing the question?
In the texts we'll be reading, the question of the self's relation to the world--and
in particular to the social world--is often figured in terms of architectural
forms that define the contours of shared space: the cave (Plato), the matrix
(the Wachowski brothers), the foundation and superstructure (Descartes), the
panopticon (Michel Foucault), the street and skyscraper (Michel de Certeau).
Your task in the final paper in this course will be to subject such architectural
figures to the test of critical thinking--to assess them in terms of the evidence
you turn up in your own research of the urban environment.
[TOP]
"This is the core where we broadcast our pirate signal and hack into
the Matrix."
-- Morpheus, character in The Matrix
The ability to write interesting, persuasive essays is essential not only
for success in all academic disciplines (yes, even the sciences) but also in
many extra-academic fields like business. The ability is rare, however, largely
because learning to write well requires lots of humility and practice. This
course is designed to give you practice in the basic components of the writing
process, which include:
- Reading inquisitively.
- Dealing with obscurities in the readings.
- Posing a genuine question about the readings to pursue in your own writing.
- Developing an argument that uses sources and evidence to investigate that
question.
- Revising your writing on the basis of criticism.
Each of these components, or stages, is easy to state and to understand but
difficult to carry out effectively in actual writing situations. In class we
will be modeling these components, practicing them through exercises, and, of
course, giving you a chance to implement them in paper assignments. Our emphasis
in all aspects of the course will be on thinking and expression and not on grammar.
(In fact, I will typically point out grammatical mistakes in your writing only
if they develop into a pattern.) The overall goal of this course is to help
you become an independent thinker and writer.
[TOP]
What does The Matrix, the 1998 film by the Wachowski brothers, have
to do with classical philosophy? Everything! The film translates Plato's allegory
of the cave (from book VII of The Republic) into a modern idiom, and
viewing it will help us identify a question from Plato that will serve as a
touchstone for the rest of the course, namely, can we trust our perceptions
of the world, particularly when those perceptions are socially conditioned?
The answer given by idealist philosophers like Plato and Descartes is that we
cannot. The solution to this problem--a problem simultaneously of perception
and of social existence--is to discover technical means of escaping social influence.
For both Plato and Descartes that means is philosophy, a special mode of reasoning
which, in Plato's allegory, allows the philosopher to leave the allegorical
"cave" of social life and journey, alone, into the "daylight."
(We can ask why the parallel journey of enlightenment in an American film like
The Matrix involves the use of firearms.) What does the daylight
represent in Plato's allegory, and why should the philosopher escape into it?
Rhetorical Objectives for Unit One
- How to read closely by noticing textual details and asking questions.
- How to develop analytical questions.
- How to define your key terms.
- How to brainstorm and draft an essay.
- How to find a thesis.
- How to support a claim with textual evidence.
- How to revise by adapting your argument to incorporate pertinent criticism
and counter-arguments.
- How to cite sources using MLA documantation style.
Typical Readings for Unit One
- Plato, Republic, Book VII,
514a-521b (the allegory of the cave)
- Wachowski brothers, The Matrix
- Descartes, two paragraphs from the Discourse
on Method
[TOP]
What makes modern thinkers modern is their characteristic emphasis on the
social context of all phenomena. Karl Marx is exemplary in this respect. The
question of the idealist philosophers above, "Can the self escape the constraints
of society?" would make no sense to Marx, since for him the self--or at
least the self found in the burgeoning metropolis of modern industrial capitalism--is
entirely constituted by society. His word for attitudes that have been influenced
by forces outside the self, by social forces, is "ideology." In this
unit we will critically assess Marx's notion of ideology by testing it against
the observations of other writers on the places and objects of modernity: streets,
commodities, garbage, toys, skyscrapers, photographs, and mass cultural objects
like newspapers and Hollywood films. Is a toy, for example, merely an innocent
object kids play with, or is it, as Toni Morrison appears to suggest in The
Bluest Eye, part of a social system that imbues it with particular meanings
which generate certain attitudes in the kids who play with it? Pecola Breedlove,
the main character in that novel, is a little black girl who learns to hate
herself because she does not resemble her blue-eyed and blond-haired doll. Attitudes
like Pecola's, passively absorbed rather than consciously chosen, are roughly
what Marx and other like-minded critics mean by "ideology." Is there
a solution to this problem? Is it a problem peculiar to modernity? And, if so,
is modernity itself a problem? Or does it even make sense to ask this question?
Rhetorical Objectives for Unit Two
- How to make connections between texts.
- How identify assumptions.
- How to build on the work of others to develop your own ideas.
- How to use the library to conduct research.
- How to cite sources using MLA documantation style.
- How to find meaningful questions in texts, whether stated or unstated.
Typical Readings for Unit Two
- Ridley Scott, Blade Runner
- George Simmel, "The Metropolis
and Mental Life."
- Stephen Crane, five chapters of Maggie:
A Girl of the Streets.
- Lee Tzu Pheng, "Bukit Timah, Singapore" (Course Reader)
- Jane Jacobs, "The Uses of Sidewalks: Contact," in The City
Cultures Reader, edited by Malcolm Miles, Tim Hall and Iain Borden (London:
Routledge, 2000), 16-17.
- Jane Jacobs, "The Uses of Sidewalks: Safety," in The City Reader,
second edition. Edited by Richard T. L Gates and Frederic Stout (London: Routledge,
1996), 106-111.
- Karl Marx, "The
Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof," Capital .
Read 14 paragraphs, from the beginning of section 4 to the paragraph starting,
"The religious world is but the reflex of the real world."
- Virginia Woolf, "Solid Objects," in A Haunted House and Other
Stories (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1972), 79-86.
- Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (New York: Plume 1994), 33-37 and 16-22.
- Charles Baudelaire, "The Poor Child's Toy," in Paris Spleen
(New York: New Directions, 1970), 35-6.
- Roland Barthes, "Toys," in Mythologies (New York: Hill
and Wang, 1957), 53-55.
- Le Corbusier, "The Pack Donkey's Way and Man's Way," and "A
Contemporary City," in The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning (New
York: Dover, 1987), 5-13, and 163-179.
[TOP]
How does the city environment affect our experience of self and others? In
this unit we will read theoretical writings that address this question, and
you will have the opportunity of testing these theories in your own research
on some aspect of the city. Topics you might investigate include: the breakdown
of national boundaries (the global city), the loss of neighborhoods, ethnic
relations, mass transportation, the city as extended in various electronic networks
(television, cyberspace, telephone), the skyscraper, cell phones, automobiles,
sidewalks, the advertised city, tourism, shopping, pace of life, crowds, home
and homelessness, regional identity, immigration, parks, public space vs. private
space, money. (The list could obviously go on and on, and we will brainstorm
many more topics in class.) If we think of the city--in our case 21st
century Singapore--as a representation or manifestation of a certain kind of
collective life, then the question you should ask and begin thinking through
in your research and writing is: what kind of life? What sorts of people does
the configuration--or architecture--of our particular urban environment tend
to create? We will examine models, both theoretical and narrative, for answering
these kinds of questions, but the process you should follow is first to consult
your own experience as a resident of Singapore to get ideas for research. One
analytical tool you can then use to develop your idea is to ask how the particular
aspect of the city you are researching - be it a building, a shared practice,
an abstract structure, an experience, or some constellation thereof - could
be different, or is different elsewhere. Accounting for the difference this
particular difference makes will help you discover the significance of your
topic.
Rhetorical Objectives for Unit Three
- How to understand (and begin to use) a representative case.
- How to pursue an independent research project.
- How to observe an object or structure (or other aspect of the city) closely
and deeply enough to theorize on how it works, what it means, or how it achieves
its effects.
- How to make theoretical claims that are demonstrably grounded in factual
or textual evidence.
- How to distinguish between a theory and a description.
- How to think in terms of differences and how to recognize false oppositions.
- How use your own experience as evidence.
- How to bring pertinent historical background to the consideration of an
object or structure.
- How to discuss a text with proper appreciation of the "language"
of the technical field of which it is a part. For example, in discussing an
architectural work, the mastery of certain specialized terms is necessary.
Typical Readings for Unit Three
- Tan Kok Meng, "Orchard Road: The Hyper Longkang of Consumption,"
Singapore Architect 204:1999, 96-99.
- David Turnbull, "Soc.culture; Singapore," in Architecture of
Fear, edited by Nan Ellin (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 1997),
227-239.
- Towards A Tropical City of Excellence (video)
- Edwin Thumboo, "Ulysses by the Merlion," in A Third Map: New and Selected
Poems (Singapore: UniPress, 1993), 80-81.
- Chua Beng-Huat, "Resettling a Chinese Village: A Longitudinal Study," in
Political Legitimacy and Housing: Stakeholding in Singapore (London:
Routledge, 1997), 51-69.
- Chua Beng-Huat, "Modernism and the Vernacular: Public Spaces and Social
Life," in Political Legitimacy and Housing: Stakeholding in Singapore
(London: Routledge, 1997), 70-89.
- Essays from Public Space: Design, Use, and Management (Singapore:
Singapore University Press, 1992).
- Rem Koolhass, "Singapore Songlines: Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis,
or, Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa," in The City Cultures Reader,
edited by Malcolm Miles, Tim Hall and Iain Borden (London: Routledge, 2000),
22-25. (Course packet).
- William Gibson, "Disneyland
with the Death Penalty," Wired Magazine, Sep/Oct 1993.
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