CSLC 237 The Novel as Philosophy: Recollecting Lost Time
Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is considered to be one of the greatest novels ever written. Two 20th century thinkers—an Eastern European philosopher Merab Mamardashvili and a French thinker Gilles Deleuze —argued that Proust’s novel is a philosophical machine: an artificial organ that allows one to gather and re-construct the self. Mamardashvili was the only Soviet philosopher to study Proust’s novel and respond to its Western European interpretations from the perspective of Eastern Europe. He also used the novel to expose and explain the more obscure aspects of the Soviet and Russian worldviews. This course puts to the test Deleuze’s and Mamardashvili’s interpretations of this novel by considering them in conjunction with significant portions of In Search of Lost Time. All of the readings and discussions will be conducted in English.