Option E: Intellectuals & Commitment

ECTS allocation : 10 credits (22 contact hours, plus student workload of 220 hours)
Module Coordinator : Roberto Bertoni
Teaching Staff : Roberto Bertoni

Aims

This course aims to explore the functions of intellectuals in modern society, with particular reference to their importance in modern European culture and history, their contribution to public life, and some aspects of their social and political commitment in a number of countries. Definitions by theorists are followed by analysis of committed films, essays and novels with the purpose to examine the main concepts in comparative ways through a variety of texts. The connecting concepts "intellectuals" and "commitment" are coherent in relation to European intellectual and social history. One of the unifying themes is commitment from a political perspective applied to the arts in Europe since the 1940s. The main areas chosen (Communism, the Mafia, conflict, globalization and terrorism) have engaged European intellectuals in various phases of the period considered. Commitment has been expressed from different political perspectives, and the variety of texts reflects this.

Working methods

The first hour each week is a lecture, and the second hour a discussion based on relevant material. Assessment consists of a submitted essay on an agreed topic. In the last week of the semester each student will give a short presentation the theme of which should be the same as the topic of their essay in order to obtain feedback from fellow students and lecturer.

Learning outcomes

Students should be able to come to grips with the term "intellectuals" and understand it with regards to both theory and social contexts. Criteria apt to define and understand "commitment" are another outcome. It is expected that the students learn how to conduct detailed examination of individual texts produced by different societies and with diverse styles of discourse.

Syllabus

Weeks 1 and 2: Does a concept of European intellectual exist? Definitions of intellectuals and their roles in society (Aron, Bauman, Benda, Bourdieu, Gramsci, Said and Sapiro).
Week 3: Communism and commitment: a Soviet interpretation of commitment (Zhdanov's position in the USSR) and some repercussions in Western Europe .
Weeks 4 to 6: Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of engagement and the creation of a European model of commitment; Elio Vittorini’s Il Politecnico in Italy; George Orwell and his reflections on politics, writing and truth. Questioning of Sartre’s (and Vittorini’s and Orwell’s) model of engagement in the 1970s, and differently also later since the 1990s.
Week 7: Study Week.
Week 8: Committed European films: the case of Italian Neorealism (Fellini and Rossellini).
Week 9: European intellectual reactions to identity and conflict as exemplified by Irish texts by authors including Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Declan Kibert and others.
Week 10: European intellectual commitment and crime as exemplified by Saviano's work about the Mafia.
Week 11: European intellectually committed space in relation to democracy, globalization and the presence of the other. Re-emergence of the notion of commitment in the 21st century.
Week 12: Students' presentations.

Assessment

Students will be required to give one presentation in class, and to submit one essay of 3500-5000 words on a selected topic.

Preliminary Bibliography

Essays on intellectuals:

• Raymond Aron, L'opium des intellectuels, Paris, Gallimard, 1968. PB- 6-594.
• Zygmunt Bauman (1987), Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-modernity, and Intellectuals, Cambridge, Polity, 1989. PL-152-175.
• Julien Benda, The treason of the intellectuals ( La trahison des clercs ), London and New York, 1982. PB- 35-828.
• Pierre Bourdieu, The field of cultural production: essays on art and literature, Cambidge, Polity, 1993. LEN 301.2 N3;1.
• Ron Eyerman, Between Culture and Politics: Intellectuals in Modern Society, Cambridge, Polity, 1994. ARTS 301.2 N48.
• Antonio Gramsci, http://www.victoryiscertain.com/gramsci/ ; Selections from The Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1971. 945.091 L11; Selection from Cultural Writings, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1985. LEN 335.4 GRA M5;1 Pbk. ed., 1991.
• Edward W. Said, Representations of the intellectual, The 1993 Reith Lectures, London, Vintage, 1994. LEN 828 N42;1.
• Gisèle Sapiro, L’espace intellectuel en Europe: De la formation des États-nations à la mondialization XIXe to XXIe siècle, Paris, Le Découverte, 2009.

Films:

• Federico Fellini, La strada (The road)
• Roberto Rossellini, Roma città aperta (Rome, open city)
• Luchino Visconti, Obsession
• Vittorio De Sica, Bycicle thieves

Other texts:

• Seamus Heaney, Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996, London, Faber, 1997. PL-440-942.
• Ciaran Carson, The Irish for No, Newcastle, Bloodaxe, 1988. PL-133-653; Belfast confetti, Oldcastle, Gallery Press, 1989. OLS L-2-705 no.3.
• Il Politecnico 1954-1947, ed. Elio Vittorini, Turin, Einaudi, 1975. HX- 2-935.
• Roberto Saviano, Gomorrah, New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006. Berkeley Basement, HL-311-569
• Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe, London, Macmillan, 1995. ARTS 320.54 N56
• Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, London, Cape, 1995. LEN HIB 820.9 N597;1, 2, 3, 4.
• George Orwell, Essays, London, Penguin, 2000. 828.912 BLA:2 P2