Displacement (s)
In this class we will look at mechanisms and techniques of cultural and political rhetoric of both superpowers USA and USSR during the Cold War (and after), with special attention to displacement, a means of re-writing and substitution of dangerous or unacceptable matters and ideas.
18.09 Introduction
25.09 What was (is) the Cold War?
2.10 Contextualizing the artwork. The Rear Window (A. Hitchcock, 1954)
Theories of Displacement
9.10 Language and displacement. 101 Dalmatians (H. Luske, C. Geronimi, 1961)
–– Charles F. Hockett, The Origin of Speech
–– Roman Jakobson, Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances
16.10 Screening: The White Sun of the Desert (V. Motyl, 1970)
23.10 Territories of displacement: The White Sun of the Desert, Major Dundee (S. Peckinpah, 1965)
–– Susan Buck-Morss, The Political Frame.
30.10 Work of displacement: Hannibal (TV Series, 2013–2015)
–– Jacques Lacan, Seminar III: The Psychoses (excerpts)
6.11 «Displacement and the Cold War» Conference.
Practices of Displacement
13.11 Displacement and the Cold War paranoia: Ira Levin’s A Kiss before Dying (1954)
–– Fredric Jameson, On Interpretation: Literature as a Socially Symbolic Act
20.11 Displacement in psychoanalysis: S. Freud “Die Traumdeutung” (1901)
–– Sigmund Freud, Die Traumdeutung (excerpts)
27.11 Displacement and science fiction: E. Parnov/M. Emtsev’s The World Soul (1964), Philip K. Dick’s Ubik (1969)
4.12 Displacement and melodrama: V. Dudintsev’s Not by bread alone (1956), Imitation of Life (D. Sirk, 1959)
11.12 «Cold War Cultures» Conference.
Conclusion
18.12 The Irony of Fate (E. Ryazanov, 1976),
–– Jaques Derrida, Semiology and Grammatology. Interview with Julia Kristeva