Friday, November 5, 2010

Posting Assignment #6 (due Sunday 11/7, 11:59 P.M.): M. Rousseau tells us how to be natural

In spite of Herr Hegel's faith in 'great men' and their power to change history, it's more likely that large ideas—like 'Romanticism,' which we called a vast 'structure of feeling'—really come from many sources and influences.  Still, it's reasonable to claim that Avatar would not be possible without Jean Jacques Rousseau's Second Discourse (On the origin of inequality) and its effects.  Nor would Wordsworth's heart leaping up when he beholds a rainbow—not to mention his faith in humble, rural people and their ostensibly pure and simple lives and natural access to truth.

Take an idea from Rousseau (tied to a passage, of course—but you don't necessarily need to quote it), and show how it works out in a scene from Avatar, or / and in Wordsworth (we've done lots on Avatar, and it might be good to look for new material in the poetry we're been reading).  See something that bears on both?  All the better.  Want to add one of the classic nature paintings?  You could do that as well. You're tracing Rousseau's ideas through other texts and practices; basic Cultural Studies.  We're looking at the complex process by which 'common sense' is constructed—all the while hiding the fact that it's anything but natural, unquestionable and eternal.

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