In this class, students will be introduced to some first principles of literary analysis: what makes a text? What is language? How did we—readers, thinkers, and writers—become creatures of language? And how do these theories and politics of language enable different modes of reading and acting in the world? Throughout, we will be guided by the protean concept of “difference,” be it directed towards pleasure, aesthetics, power, social structures, or yet else. The thinkers on our syllabus have indelibly altered the practice of literary analysis by rethinking the ways in which differences are made and mobilized in language and politics. In following their lead, our aims are twofold: first, to practice reading theoretical texts in an attentive manner; second, to be exposed to key ideas in the development of literary and critical theory as it stands today. Informal prerequisites include: willingness to think carefully; and curiosity about literature, language, politics, and the world. Readings may be drawn from the work of: Sylvia Wynter; Grace Lee Boggs; Frantz Fanon; Édouard Glissant; Gloria Anzaldúa; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; Heather Love; Melanie Klein; Sigmund Freud; Judith Butler; Michel Foucault; Gayatri Spivak; Edward Said; Jacques Derrida; J.L. Austin; Roland Barthes; and Ferdinand de Saussure.