Please take special note of the time and days this class meets. This semester, we will take up questions of representation. Examining a diverse collection of texts written by a variety of thinkers, we will ask: What does it mean to re-present that which is, is not, or could be? How do representations shape, as well as alter, the aesthetic, psychic, and socio-political worlds we inhabit? What are the limits of representation and how can we think and/or experience these limits? Is it possible to represent the apparently unrepresentable? Rather than settling on single answers to such complex questions, our primary goal will be to think critically about the multiple ways they have been pursued. Major sub-themes of the course include: truth and lying, origins, self, other, gender, sexuality, authorship, subjectivity, the unconscious, aesthetics, capitalism and commodity culture, political collectivity, race, colonialism and imperialism, space, time, and history.