Lecture Notes
Week 2
- EU in post colonial perspective
- EU Studies: stands apart in the field of humanities
- Rethink space and geography→ what does it mean if you collect and organise
knowledge on the basis of region and space?
- Interdisciplinarity
Text Rumford
- Where is EU Studies?
- Where on the disciplinary map of social sciences and humanities can it be found ?
- Has to do with: rift between EU studies (EU) → inward looking and not global
- Suggest EU studies not enough recognition
- EX: Balkanization: separation of smaller states / Disintegration of Yugoslavia:
cultural
- Greece: did become member of EU
- Other Balkans: communists
- National identity issues→ nationalism in Balkans: endemic nature
- In reality: always present in EU states
- West EU saying Balkans are nationalists→ judgemental
- Rumford→ relevant stuff
- Found in many disciplines: integration, geography, sociology, cultural
- How do these disciplines talk to one another? → Rumford: EU
outspoken research
agenda (pg2)
- EU relation to intern
world
- Colonial legacies…
- Common methodological notion: Constructiveness of Europe
- Which discipline comes first?
- EU studies common object→ the transformations of Europe
- Ex: mobility, hybridity, governmentalism, risk society,
migration, post-national, citizenship
- We can add: postcolonialism, nationalism, minorities
- Constructiveness + Transformations→ but how all together
- Multi and Interdisciplinary subjects
- Interdisciplinarity: Unesco: interaction of disciplines from simple communication of
ideas, to integration of concepts
- Different fields of knowledge
- Philosopher Fuller: Disciplines are artificial pattern of
inquiry
- Criticism of Interdisciplinarity: 1. True knowledge requires
work
, 2. Mastering more disciplines is
hard
- Disciplines are in continuous process of redefining themselves
- EX: literary studies→ scholars borrow ideas from other
fields
- 1960s: literary and linguistics: identical
- Now: remote from linguistics
- Internal reasons: object requires to look in
other aspects
- External reasons:
- Ongoing redefinitions→ turns
- Linguistic turn and cultural turn affect
sensatory turn and digital turn
- Are they like paradigm shifts (Khun?): In humanities the
conditions for the subject
is the existence of the
people who created it
- Changes in humanities are changes in
how we analyse objects we create
- These turns are not paradigm shifts,
because no radical change, but exchange,
interchange
1. The Narrative Turn
- Nature and effect of story
- Widespread attention→ in various domains
- EX: Psychology – narrative identity thesis
- Law – narrative aspects of confessions, closings
- Medical – illness narratives
- Management theory – ‘the story of a product or a company’
- Why begin with narrative? → Fake distinctions: science vs humanities
- MAN are human made objects
- Language: key in how phenomena are
Constructed
- Narrative: story structure, object and means of
interpretation
- Without narrative: experience can't reproduced
- MODE of representation
- Where does it come from→ Began: Ancient Rhetoric
- Writing and speaking
- Tropes/figures of speech ecc
- Foundation for study of text
- 19th c: Historicization
- History of language
, - Historicity: how can one reconstruct the
historical character of a nation ?
- 20th c: Russian Formalism
- Tsarist Russia: discover text imminent
analysis
- Studying literature, paragraphs, novels,
poems
- Language of literature have specific
qualities
- Shklovsky, Mayakovsky→ authors,
poets
- Shklovsky→ main theoretician
- Jakobson: study of language
structuralism
- Leading principle of
structuralism / formalism
- Formalism: short stories→ distinction
between Fabula vs Subject
- Fabula: underlying chronological
order
- Subject: events presented
- Structuralism: Vladimir Propp
- Book: each folk has its own
synchronic arrangement
- All folk tales: hold patterns
- Bal→ analysis of Rembrandt painting Susanna & The Elders
- Example of interdisciplinarity and narrative turn
- Rumford: transformations and constructiveness of EU
- Meaning is constructed
- Object is transformed
- Rembrandt → institutionalised artist
- Problem of it: how do iconic paintings with outspoken
sexual subject function now?
- Narratology: adds focalization
- Mise en abyme: mirror image of the painting as a whole
- Commentary about the act of watching
- Interdisciplinarity: narratology helps to refine the visual mode
- EX: Bal → eternalizing the role of women as victims
- The Fabula: constructs a whole version of the story → no source, constructed
as watching
- Result of ongoing transformation of meaning of the object
- Constructivism (Rumford): meaning is created, not given but recreated
Week 2
- EU in post colonial perspective
- EU Studies: stands apart in the field of humanities
- Rethink space and geography→ what does it mean if you collect and organise
knowledge on the basis of region and space?
- Interdisciplinarity
Text Rumford
- Where is EU Studies?
- Where on the disciplinary map of social sciences and humanities can it be found ?
- Has to do with: rift between EU studies (EU) → inward looking and not global
- Suggest EU studies not enough recognition
- EX: Balkanization: separation of smaller states / Disintegration of Yugoslavia:
cultural
- Greece: did become member of EU
- Other Balkans: communists
- National identity issues→ nationalism in Balkans: endemic nature
- In reality: always present in EU states
- West EU saying Balkans are nationalists→ judgemental
- Rumford→ relevant stuff
- Found in many disciplines: integration, geography, sociology, cultural
- How do these disciplines talk to one another? → Rumford: EU
outspoken research
agenda (pg2)
- EU relation to intern
world
- Colonial legacies…
- Common methodological notion: Constructiveness of Europe
- Which discipline comes first?
- EU studies common object→ the transformations of Europe
- Ex: mobility, hybridity, governmentalism, risk society,
migration, post-national, citizenship
- We can add: postcolonialism, nationalism, minorities
- Constructiveness + Transformations→ but how all together
- Multi and Interdisciplinary subjects
- Interdisciplinarity: Unesco: interaction of disciplines from simple communication of
ideas, to integration of concepts
- Different fields of knowledge
- Philosopher Fuller: Disciplines are artificial pattern of
inquiry
- Criticism of Interdisciplinarity: 1. True knowledge requires
work
, 2. Mastering more disciplines is
hard
- Disciplines are in continuous process of redefining themselves
- EX: literary studies→ scholars borrow ideas from other
fields
- 1960s: literary and linguistics: identical
- Now: remote from linguistics
- Internal reasons: object requires to look in
other aspects
- External reasons:
- Ongoing redefinitions→ turns
- Linguistic turn and cultural turn affect
sensatory turn and digital turn
- Are they like paradigm shifts (Khun?): In humanities the
conditions for the subject
is the existence of the
people who created it
- Changes in humanities are changes in
how we analyse objects we create
- These turns are not paradigm shifts,
because no radical change, but exchange,
interchange
1. The Narrative Turn
- Nature and effect of story
- Widespread attention→ in various domains
- EX: Psychology – narrative identity thesis
- Law – narrative aspects of confessions, closings
- Medical – illness narratives
- Management theory – ‘the story of a product or a company’
- Why begin with narrative? → Fake distinctions: science vs humanities
- MAN are human made objects
- Language: key in how phenomena are
Constructed
- Narrative: story structure, object and means of
interpretation
- Without narrative: experience can't reproduced
- MODE of representation
- Where does it come from→ Began: Ancient Rhetoric
- Writing and speaking
- Tropes/figures of speech ecc
- Foundation for study of text
- 19th c: Historicization
- History of language
, - Historicity: how can one reconstruct the
historical character of a nation ?
- 20th c: Russian Formalism
- Tsarist Russia: discover text imminent
analysis
- Studying literature, paragraphs, novels,
poems
- Language of literature have specific
qualities
- Shklovsky, Mayakovsky→ authors,
poets
- Shklovsky→ main theoretician
- Jakobson: study of language
structuralism
- Leading principle of
structuralism / formalism
- Formalism: short stories→ distinction
between Fabula vs Subject
- Fabula: underlying chronological
order
- Subject: events presented
- Structuralism: Vladimir Propp
- Book: each folk has its own
synchronic arrangement
- All folk tales: hold patterns
- Bal→ analysis of Rembrandt painting Susanna & The Elders
- Example of interdisciplinarity and narrative turn
- Rumford: transformations and constructiveness of EU
- Meaning is constructed
- Object is transformed
- Rembrandt → institutionalised artist
- Problem of it: how do iconic paintings with outspoken
sexual subject function now?
- Narratology: adds focalization
- Mise en abyme: mirror image of the painting as a whole
- Commentary about the act of watching
- Interdisciplinarity: narratology helps to refine the visual mode
- EX: Bal → eternalizing the role of women as victims
- The Fabula: constructs a whole version of the story → no source, constructed
as watching
- Result of ongoing transformation of meaning of the object
- Constructivism (Rumford): meaning is created, not given but recreated
