The human being is this Night, this empty nothing which contains everything in its simplicity… We see this Night when we look a human being in the eye, looking into a Night which turns terrifying. [For from his eyes] the night of the world hangs out toward us.
— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6)
WEEK 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE: TYPES OF UNDERWORLD
SECTION A. KATABASIS & NEKYIA
WEEK 2. ORPHEUS’S GAZE
Ovid, Book 10, Metamorphoses.
Blanchot, Maurice. “Orpheus’s Gaze,” The Space of Literature. Trans. Ann Smock. U of Nebraska P, 1982, pp. 171-76.
Sans Soleil, dir. Chris Marker, 1983.
WEEK 3. HARVEST/ RHIZOME
Thomas Ligotti, “The Shadow at the Bottom of the World,” Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimescribe, New York: Penguin, 2011, pp. 396-405.
Jane Harrison, “Harvest Festivals,” Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1903. pp. 77-95.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. “Rhizome: Introduction.” A Thousand Plateaus.Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Bloomsbury, 1987, pp. 7-13.
WEEK 4. DREAMS OF DEATH
Mulholland Drive, dir. David Lynch, 2001.
James Hillman, “Chap. 3: Psyche,” The Dream & The Underworld, pp. 23-67.
WEEK 5. LOOKING AWRY AT THE THING
Vertigo. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1958.
Slavoj Žižek, “Sublimation and the Fall of the Object,” Looking Awry An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, pp. 67-70.
Jacques Lacan, “Chap. IX: On creation ex nihilo,” The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960. pp. 115-27.
SECTION B. CHTHONIC CAPITALOCENES
WEEK 6. NUCLEAR ENDTIME
Jacques Derrida, “No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles, Seven Missives).” Diacritics 14.2 (1984), pp. 20-31.
Hiroshima mon amour. Dir. Alan Resnais, France, 1959.
WEEK 7. SUBURBAN ABYSS
Mark Danielewski, House of Leaves, 2000, pp. 3-245.
House Of Leaves file 1 ; House Of Leaves file 2
WEEK 8. COMMODITY & SUBJECTIVITY
Wolfgang Hilbig, Old Rendering Plant, 2007.
SECTION C. SUBTERRANEAN MODERNITIES
WEEK 9. BURROWING & FUN
Franz Kafka. “The Burrow,” Willa and Edwin Muir (trans.), 1931.
John Barth, “Lost in the Funhouse,” 1968.
WEEK 10. NETWORKING THE VOID
W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz. Trans. Anthea Bell. London, Penguin, 2011, pp. 165-354.
WEEK 11. BLACK SUN: DEPRESSION & THE VIRTUAL
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), dir. Daniels.
Julia Kristeva, “Chap. 1: Psychoanalysis–A Counterdepressant,” Black Sun: Depression & Melancholia, 1987, pp. 3-30.
Brian Massumi, Chapter 1: “The Autonomy of Affect,” Parables for the Virtual, 2002, pp. 23-45.
SECTION D. MAPPING UNDERWORLDS
WEEK 12. DARK MOTHER
Mother! (2017), dir. Darren Aronofsky.
Monica Sjoo & Barbara Mor, “The Original Black Mother” & “Sun’s Victory over the Dark Mother,” The Great Cosmic Mother, 1987, pp. 21-32 & 244-52.
WEEK 13. THE GREAT HOUSE
Susanna Clarke, Piranesi, 2020.
WEEKS 14. & 15. OTHER UNDERWORLDS — STUDENT PROJECTS
STUDENT TASKS:
Classwork: Each week students should develop their ideas concerning at least two quotations and be prepared to share those ideas in class: 25%
Presentation (5-10 minutes): 10%
Week 15. “Other underworlds” presentation — 1.) students argue the case for a text of their own proposing (not in the syllabus) to be included in the cannon of underworld texts; 2.) Students propose a tentative definition/ interpretation/ explanation/ mapping of the underworld motif (about 5 minutes): 15%
Final paper on the topic: defining/ interpreting/ explaining/ mapping the underworld motif, combining analysis of (a) primary text(s) with (a) specific methodological / theoretical approach(es). IMPORTANT: the final paper should contain an original thesis developed from the student’s research. To develop their original ideas, students might reflect on how each week classes have combined distant, dissimilar or tangential texts in order to generate new knowledge. Please email the instructor the paper as a Word document whenever it is ready. (About 3000 words): 50%
underworlds 