Syllabus

English Comp A
Ranting, Raving, Writing

Fall 2005

Thursdays, 1.00-3.45, Conference Room
Instructor: Dale Carrico, dalec@berkeley.edu
Office Hours: Before and after class and by appointment

Course Description

This is a course in argumentative reading and writing. But the works we will be reading together are anything but exemplary argumentative texts. Our texts rant and rave, they are brimming with rage, dripping with corrosive humor, suffused with ecstasies. In ranting and raving arguments are pushed into a kind of crisis, and in them rhetoric becomes a kind of poetry.

What does it tell us about argument in general to observe it in extremis like this? How can we read transcendent texts critically, in ways that clarify their stakes without dismissing their force, and enable us to communicate intelligibly to others the reactions they inspire in us and the meanings we find in them?

Sept 1 Introduction
Discussion of “Four Habits of Argumentative Writing”
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~dalec/fourhabits.html

Sept 8 Discussion of Anonymous, “Fuck the South”
http://www.fuckthesouth.com/
2-3pp. Diagnostic Essay due.

Sept 15 Discussion of Plato, Symposium
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/plato_symposium01.htm
Draft for paper two due. 3-4pp.

Sept 22 Discussion of Friedrich Nietzsche, “Ecce Homo” (excerpts)
http://users.compaqnet.be/cn127103/Nietzsche_ecce_homo/
Peer editing paper two.

Sept 29 Discussion of Nietzsche, “Ecce Homo” (continued)
Second paper due. 3-4pp.

Oct 6 Fiodr Dostoievski, “Notes From the Underground” (excerpt)
http://eserver.org/books/dostoevsky-underground/
Draft for paper three due. 3-4pp.

Oct 13 Discussion of Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”
http://www.rooknet.com/beatpage/writers/ginsberg.html#howl
Peer editing paper three.

Oct 20 Discussion of William Burroughs, “Immortality”
http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/immortality.html
Third paper due. 3-4pp.

Oct 27 Screening of Network. Dir. Sidney Lumet.

Nov 3 Discussion of the film, Network.
Draft for paper four due. 4-5pp.

Nov 10 Discussion of Dianna Dimassa, “Hothead Paisan”
Peer editing paper four.

Nov 17 Discussion of Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto
http://www.womynkind.org/scum.htm
Fourth paper due. 4-5pp.

Nov 24-25 Thanksgiving Holiday

Dec 1 Discussion of Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
Draft for final paper due. 5-6pp.

Dec 8 Discussion of the Cyborg Manifesto (continued)
Peer editing final papers.

Dec 15 Concluding Remarks.
Final Paper due. 5-6pp.