The Theory of the Sign

Catalog description

A survey of three late twentieth-century theorists: Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. Our analyses will focus on these figures as they emerge from and reorient the broad field of semiotics, with particular attention to the evolution of each oeuvre, the continuities and discontinuities that distinguish their theoretical claims, and their diverging legacies. Readings will include Althusser's Reading Capital and "Contradiction and Over-determination;" Derrida’s Of Grammatology and Spurs; and Foucault's This is Not a Pipe and History of Sexuality. Critical concepts to be examined include signification, reading, discourse, subjectivity, power, historicism, archaeology, the supplement, and difference.