Proposed Cuts: an email

Professor H.,

I'm looking through our updated syllabus in hopes of figuring out where/how to cut Caruth (I think I might decide we shouldn't cut anything -- is this ok??). Reading back through her introduction, it is clear to me that we should have covered our little bits that we're including of Pleasure Principle before we come to Caruth, because she refers to it a lot. So I looked at the syllabus and I don't think we even have a spot in there for the Pleasure Principle terms!

We decided that the Pleasure Principle terms should be the Death Instinct and the Pleasure Principle, however I think adding the compulsion to repeat would be appropriate and helpful also. So with those three terms assigned, we have about 13 pages, copied into Word, from LaPlanche. This is really not very much to read. I was thinking maybe we could just put those couple of terms on the syllabus, or else hand it out as a packet the first day, and tell students that they should read it by week 3 in order to fully grasp Caruth. Alternatively we could just put it on MyCourses, although I think that it's likely that if we hand it out the first day, students will read it right after they shop the class and it will help them decide that our class is really interesting and that they should take it.

So on to Caruth. We have assigned in total 52 pages of Caruth. The pages are small, with not that much text on them. I really feel that we could assign all of it, although when I look at the week to which we have assigned it - 2 chapters of Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, assigned on the same day as one Primo Levi chapter, I feel less sure about that. So maybe we could cut chapter 5, "Traumatic Awakenings," because it works with Lacan and Dreams, two subjects that I think can (should?) be avoided in the context of our course. That cuts that page count down to 40.

And finally for this email, Levi. In my blog I suggested that we make everything after chapter 5 optional. That leaves us assigning around 109 pages (including the preface) of this book, if we consider that the students will have already read the chapter on Shame. So I think we should assign either chapters 1-5 excluding chapter 3 (Shame), or that, plus chapter 7 (Stereotypes) which deals with the questions of why concentration camp prisoners did not rebel or try to escape. I don't think this chapter is necessary, however, if you feel I have cut too much we can definitely add it. That would bump the page count up to 126.

I'm going to crosspost this email in my blog because it includes a lot of speculative thinking. I'm going to tackle cutting Savage tomorrow and this afternoon. La Capra still needs work (OBVIOUSLY!!) so I will bring my ideas and beg your input on Wednesday.

Excuse the long email. I bolded the subjects of the paragraphs for ease in browsing.

Hope you had a great weekend!!
-s