VARIETIES OF PLEASURE IN GREECE AND ROME
Revised syllabus (Jan. 04)
This is a seminar meant for exploring (together) and for elaborating
on a point, or rather on a nexus of concerns (mine). The territory will be defined
by two interlocking questions: How did the ancients conceive, name, contest,
value, divide up, experience, and claim their pleasures? and, What was the cultural
work that pleasure did for them? There are no obvious borders here, and the
exact shape of the course will depend upon who participates in it. To get at
these questions we will want to follow a trajectory that leads from (say) the
Sirens in the Odyssey to the Sirens of the Second Sophistic, and covering
some obvious stopping points in literature, art, literary and aesthetic criticism
and description, philosophy, periegetic literature, paradoxology, and so on,
with key concepts that will include hedonism, entertainment, ecstasy, the sublime,
pleasure vs. pain, the pleasures and phenomenology of cultural identity (being
Greek or Roman), pleasures as popular and elite markers in high and low culture,
etc. The course should appeal to anyone interested in any of these or similar
areas, and in a new way of getting at cultural history generally. Along the
way expect to read a couple of recent or contemporary works (in selection) on
how we conceive of pleasure today, mainly just to provoke our own thinking and
to develop a common vocabulary for getting at so elusive an idea as pleasure,
in addition to some secondary literature on targeted ancient materials (to be
read selectively and in the original). Part of the challenge, and I hope pleasure,
will be to see how many different varieties of pleasure we can discover together:
what are the differences between hêdonê, terpsis, psuchagôgia,
ekstasis, euphrosunê, gargalizein, delectatio, gaudium, voluptas, suavitas,
blanditia, titillatio, etc.?
The decision about which approaches to pleasure we take can be left wide open
until we meet; an eventual syllabus will result from our first couple of meetings.
But I do expect to draw attention to a few themes that I’ve been developing
in my own recent work and for which I know of no ready-made theories, including
the idea of public pleasure—pleasure that is culturally shared
and significant, and not simply private, for instance in the form of cultural
memories or political and social identities; forms of classicism (in
all media) as pleasurable ways of reliving or enforcing (canonical views of)
the past; and the pleasures of flourishing, individually and collectively
(the ethics of pleasure and the pleasures of self-cultivation). Behind all of
these is the fact that pleasure is closely linked to value: it is a
way of determining, fixing, and exhibiting whatever is felt to be of value to
an individual or a collectivity. The most general suggestion I want to develop
in the class is this (but feel free to dispute it): Cultures are held together
as much by regimes of pleasure as they are by regimes of force or coercion
(including the coercion of convention). Pleasure is thus an important ideological
tool that helps cement consensus and to smooth over fundamental inconsistencies
in a field of public perceptions, beliefs, and assumptions. That is, what we
find pleasurable is not always a matter of personal decision but often of social
pressure. And so too, a history of sensations (experiences and feelings,
however inarticulate they may be) is a viable method of understanding the past.
We’ll stop short of musing on the kinds of satisfaction that doing classics
provides us with today (but for that, see, e.g., Michael Shanks, Experiencing
the Past: On the Character of Archaeology, 1992, and my “The Materiality
of Classical Studies,” in Parallax (“De-Classifying Hellenism:
Cultural Studies and the Classics,” ed. Karen Bassi and Peter Euben),
9.4 (2003) 64-74.
Requirements: This is a research seminar. The expectation is that participants
will produce a final research essay of article length and be willing to present
a preliminary version of this to the class in the second half of term. In the
first half we will work through individual materials in common, and will continue
to do so in the second half as time permits, or until we drop. Students interested
in developing an aspect of their current work (including prelim exam topics/areas
or dissertations) or who are simply interested in reading an author who writes
on pleasure (think: reading lists) or in trying out something different are
encouraged to take this course. Because this is a topic with several interdisciplinary
implications, a class made up of archaeologists, historians, and philologists
would be ideal.
Interested? Questions? Don’t hesitate to nab me in the hall or email me
at jport@umich.edu. If you are planning
on taking the course let’s meet this term to discuss how the syllabus
can be shaped now to meet your interests.