Repetition: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Freud

Catalog description

A study of the concept and the textual practices of repetition. We will consider the relation between repetition and transcendence, history, memory, and art. The course will focus on how the category and the event of repetition problematize identity, interpretation, and expression. Issues include religion and aesthetics of repetition (Kierkegaard); history and the eternal return (Nietzsche); repetition compulsion and the death drive (Freud). We will especially be interested in how the theme of repetition informs the way these thinkers write and what problems this poses to interpretation and understanding. In English.