AT 21-001_FA22: In the 1999 film, The Matrix, the protagonist discovers an astounding truth: although he had believed in the reality around him, everything, including people he knew, originated in a computer-generated image fed directly to his brain. This scenario - in which others are nothing more than an illusion with no interior life - is not a modern invention. Centuries before, Rene Descartes asked whether we can know if others exist. Perhaps, Descartes mused, they are simply perfected machines or a hallucination created by a malevolent demon. In this course, we will study how, as in Descartes, French/Francophone conceptions of mind and body inform our understanding of others. We will start with how Descartes casts others as unknowable in questioning their existence. We then move to how the Haitian zombie myth imagines the body as a lifeless prison that hides the captive mind under a blank face. Finally, we will study French existentialist depictions of love that cast others as a potential invasive threat to the self but also as enigmatic and confusing. The course?s main focus is literature and philosophy, but films and podcasts will clarify each theme's legacy for today?s world.
- Enseignant: Ashley Scheu