Being Vulnerable

We are living in a time of increased
vulnerability. From safe spaces to trigger
warnings and cancel culture, drone wars to global
warming and mass migrations, Black Lives Matter to
#MeToo and the "great replacement" conspiracy
theory of the alt-right--and let's not forget the
pandemic: in each of these phenomena, homo
vulnerabilis is coming to terms--and is often
forced to come to terms--with the fact that they
can be wounded, or even die. Starting from
Byung-Chul Han's claim in Saving Beauty that
"without injury, neither poetry nor art is
possible", this course proposes to pursue
something like an overview of today's
vulnerability crises with special attention to how
literature, and the arts more broadly, have
engaged with them. Playing out the difference
between universal, ontological vulnerability and
specific historical experiences of
vulnerabilization, the course draws from
literature and the other arts to develop a
critical perspective on our (and not only our)
strange "ability" to be "wounded"
("vulner-ability," from the Latin word "vulnus",
"wound"). Authors to be considered may include
J.M. Coetzee, W.G. Sebald, Teju Cole, Jenny
Erpenbeck, Claudia Rankine, Mary Gaitskill, and
Michel Houellebecq. Critical approaches will range
from work by Susan Sontag and Judith Butler to
Saidiya Hartman and Maggie Nelson. We will also
discuss artworks by Jeff Wall, Kehinde Wiley, Ai
Weiwei, Cassie Thornton, and others.