Syllabus: Power, Resistance, and Socio-Political Transformation


Washington State University,

Tuesdays 6:10-9 p.m., Johnson Tower 807




Professor: Dr. Claudia LeebTA: Taewoo Kang

Email: claudia.leeb@wsu.eduEmail: taewoo.kang@wsu.edu

Phone: 509-335-8701Office Hours: Tue 2-5 pm

Office Hours: Tue 4-6 pm & Th 12-1 pm226 Johnson Tower

808 Johnson Tower



You need to purchase the following six books (all other articles and chapters not contained in the books are available on-line):

1. Robert C. Tucker (ed.) The Marx-Engels Reader (second edition, 1978, New York/London: Norton & Company).

2. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, John Cumming (trans.) (2002, The Continuum Publishing Company).

3. Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader, Paul Rabinow (Editor), (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984)

4. Jacques Lacan, My Teaching, (2008, London/New York: Verso).

5. Georgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Daniel Heller-Roazen (trans.) (1995, Stanford: Stanford University Press).

6. Adriana Caverero, Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, William McCuaig (trans.) (November 2008, New York: Columbia University Press).



Course Schedule

08/20; Introduction, no reading



German Critical Theory I: Karl Marx

08/28; Marx—Primary Texts:

For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing, in The Marx-Engels Reader, 12-15.

Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction, in The Marx-Engels Reader, 53-61.

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in The Marx-Engels Reader, 66-81.

Theses on Feuerbach, in The Marx-Engels Reader, 143-145.

The German Ideology, in The Marx-Engels Reader, 146-155.

Capital, Volume One, in The Marx-Engels Reader, 294-329.

Manifesto of the Communist Party, in The Marx-Engels Reader, 469-491.

09/04


Marx—Contemporary Engagements:

John Seed, “Introduction: Reading Marx,” “Politics: The 1848 Revolutions,” Marx: A Guide for the Perplexed, (2010, NY: Continuum, ), 1-43.

Etienne Balibar, “Marxist Philosophy or Marx’s Philosophy?,” in The Philosophy of Marx (1995, London/New York: Verso), 1-12.

Claudia Leeb, “Marx and the Gendered Structure of Capitalism,” Philosophy & Social Criticism (vol. 33, no. 7, November 2007), 833-859.



German Critical Theory II: Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno

09/11; Adorno—Primary Texts:

“The Concept of Enlightenment,” in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, 3-42.

“Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment,” in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, 43-80.

“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” 120-167.

“Elements of Anti-Semitism,” 168-208.

09/18


Adorno—Contemporary Engagements:

Simon Jarvis, “The Dialectic of Enlightenment,” in Adorno: A Critical Introduction (1998, NY: Routledge), 20-43.

Roger Forster, “Dialectic of Enlightenment as Genealogy Critique,” Telos (summer 2001), 73-93.

Claudia Leeb, “Fears and Desires: Women, Class and Adorno,” Theory & Event (vol. 11, no. 1, (February 2008).



French Post-Structuralism I: Michel Foucault

09/25; Foucault—Primary Texts:

“Truth and Power,” in The Foucault Reader, 51-75.

“Docile Bodies,” in The Foucault Reader, 179-187.

“The Means of Correct Training,” in The Foucault Reader, 188-205.

“Objective,” “Method,” in The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books), 81-102.

“Right of Death and Power over life,” in The Foucault Reader, 258-272.

09/25


First Short Paper is Due


10/02; Foucault—Contemporary Engagements:

Lloyd, Henry Martyn, “Power, Resistance, and the Foucauldian Technologies,” Philosophy Today, (Feb 2012), 26-38

Amy Allen, “The Impurity of Practical Reason: Power and Autonomy in Foucault,” in her The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, (2008, New York: Columbia University Press), 54-71

Sandra Lee Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” in K. Conboy, N. Medina & S. Stanbury (eds.) Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment & Feminist Theory (1997, New York: Columbia university Press), pp. 129-154


French Post-Structuralism II: Jacques Lacan

10/09; Lacan—Primary Texts

My Teaching (entire book)


10/16; Lacan—Contemporary Engagements

Yannis Stavrakakis, Lacan & the Political, chapter 3, Lacan and the Political, 71-98. Slavoj Zizek, “Love Thy Neighbour? No, Thanks!”, in The Plague of Fantasies (1997, London: Verso, 1997), 45-85.

Claudia Leeb, “Toward a Theoretical Outline of the Subject: The Centrality of Adorno and Lacan for Feminist Political Theorizing,”Political Theory (vol. 36, no. 3, June 2008), 351-376.


Italian Political Thought I:  Georgio Agamben

10/23; Agamben—Primary Text:

Homo Sacer: Soverein Power and Bare Life (entire book)


Second Short Paper is Due


10/30; Agamben—Contemporary Engagements:

Andrew Norris, “Georgio Agamben and the Politics of the Living Dead,” in Andrew Norris (ed.) Politics, Metaphysics, and Death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer (2005, Duke University Press), 1-30.

Sonja Buckel and Jens Wissel, State Project Europe: The Transformation of the European Border Regime and the Production of Bare Life, International Political Sociology (2010) 4, 33-49.

Peter Gratton, “A ‘Retro-version’ of Power: Agamben via Foucault on Sovereignty,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Vol. 9, No. 3, 445-459, (September 2006).


Italian Political Thought II:  Adriana Cavarero

11/06; Cavarero—Primary Text:

Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence (entire book)


11/13; Cavarero— Contemporary Engagements:

Lisa Guenther Lisa, “Being-from-others: Reading Heidegger after Cavarero,”

Hypatia, Vol. 23: Issue 1 (Winter 2008), 99-118.

Elena Vachelli, “Geographies of subjectivity: locting feminist political subjects in Milan,”Gender, Place and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 6, December 2011, 768–78.


11/20; Thanksgiving Holiday


11/27; Movie/Documentary on a thinker we discussed


Research Paper is Due


12/04; Summary of Course Material, Research Paper Presentations




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