Syllabus: Power and Political Resistance
Dr. Claudia Leeb
Office location: 204 Silsby
Office phone: 603-646-2548
Office hours: by appointment
Description:
In this seminar we engage with central themes and approaches of three contemporary political theories: critical theory, post-structuralism, and feminist political theory. This course has three goals. First, we engage with these theories to obtain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of power in modern societies. Second, we analyze the ways in which these theories might assist us to think about issues pertaining to political resistance. Third, we analyze the ways in which the respective thinkers conceptualize socio-political change. We begin with Marx and Marcuse (critical theory), followed by Foucault and Derrida (post-structuralism), and conclude with Iris Marion Young and Judith Butler (feminist political theory).
Required Texts:
You need to purchase the following six books; the articles are available on blackboard.
Robert C. Tucker (ed.) The Marx-Engels Reader (second edition, 1978, New York/London: Norton & Company).
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (second edition, 2002, New York: Routledge).
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction, (1990, New York: Vintage).
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (1994, New York: Routledge).
Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press)
Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (2005, New York: Fordham University Press).
Course Schedule:
Week 1
Tuesday, Critical Theory 1: Early Karl Marx
“Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” “Theses on Feuerbach,” “The German Ideology: Part I,” in Robert C. Tucker (ed.). The Marx-Engels Reader (second edition, 1978, New York/London: Norton & Company),
-
pp.53 – 66; 143-145; pp. 146-200
Thursday, Critical Theory 2: Late Karl Marx
“Capital, Volume One, Part I,” “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in Robert C. Tucker (ed.). The Marx-Engels Reader,
pp. 302-329. pp. 302- 329; pp. 469-500
Week 2
Tuesday, Critical Theory 3: Debates on Marx
Etienne Balibar, “Marxist Philosophy or Marx’s Philosophy?,” “Ideology and Fetishism: Power and Subjection,”
in The Philosophy of Marx (1995, London/New York: Verso), pp. 1-12; pp 42-79.
Claudia Leeb, “Marx and the Gendered Structure of Capitalism,” Philosophy & Social Criticism (vol. 33, no. 7, November, 2007), pp. 833-859.
Thursday, Critical Theory 4: Herbert Marcuse I
“Part I: One-Dimensional Society,” One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (second edition, 2002, New York: Routledge), pp. 3-126.
Week 3
Tuesday, Critical Theory 5: Herbert Marcuse II
“Part II: One-Dimensional Thought,” “Part III: The Chance of Alternatives”: One- dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (second edition, 2002, New York: Routledge), pp. 127-262.
Thursday, Critical Theory 6: Debates on Marcuse
Caroline Bassett, “Forms of reconciliation: On contemporary surveillance,” Cultural Studies (vol. 29, no. 1, January, 2007),
pp. 82-94.
Espen Hammer, “Marcuse’s critical theory of modernity,” Philosophy and Social Criticism (vol. 34, no. 9, November 2008).
1st paper due
Week 4
Tuesday, Post-structuralism 1: Michel Foucault I
The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction, (1990, New York: Vintage), pp. 1-73.
“Docile Bodies,” “Panopticism,” in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader. (1984, New York: Pantheon Books.),
pp. 179-187, pp. 206- 213.
Thursday, Post-structuralism 2: Michel Foucault II
The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction, (1990, New York: Vintage), pp. 75-159.
“Governmentality,” in G. Burchell et al. (ed) The Foucault Effect: Studies on Governmentality (1991, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press); pp. 87 – 104.
Week 5
Tuesday, Post-structuralism 3: Debates on Foucault
Amy Allen, “Foucault, Subjectivity, and the Enlightenment: A Critical Reappraisal,” in her The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, (2008, New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 22-44.
Giovanna Procacci, “Social Economy and the Government of Poverty,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies on Governmentality (1991, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press); pp. 151-168.
Thursday, Post-structuralism 4: Jacques Derrida I
“Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority,’ Part I, in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice,” (1990, Cardozo Law Review, Vol. 11. No. 5-6, pp. 921-973.
“Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul: The Impossible beyond a Sovereign Cruelty,” in: Without Alibi, transl. by P. Kamuf (2002, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press).
Week 6
Tuesday, Post-Structuralism 5: Jacques Derrida II
Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (1994, New York: Routledge), selections.
Thursday, Post-Structuralism 6: Debates on Derrida
Drucilla Cornell, “The Violence of the Masquerade: Law Dressed Up as Justice,” in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 1047-1064.
Antonio Negri, “The Specter’s Smile,” in Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specter s of Marx (1999, New York: Verso), pp. 5-16.
2nd paper due
Week 7
Tuesday, Feminist Political Theory 1: Iris Marion Young I
Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press), selections.
Thursday, Feminist Political Theory 2: Iris Marion Young II
Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press), selections.
Week 8
Tuesday, Feminist Political Theory 3: Debates on Young
Marina Falbo, “On Iris Young’s subject of inclusion: Rethinking political inclusion,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, (vol. 34, no. 9, 2008), pp. 963-986.
Lorenzo Simpson, “Communication and the Politics of Difference: Reading Iris Young,” Constellations: An International Journal of Critical & Democratic Theory, (vol. 7 no. 3, September 2000,), pp. 430-443.
Thursday, Feminist Political Theory 4: Judith Butler I
“Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire,” in her Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990, New York: Routledge), pp. 3 – 44.
“Introduction,” in her Bodies That Matter (1993, New York: Routledge), pp. 1-23.
Week 9
Tuesday, Feminist Political Theory 5: Judith Butler II
Giving an Account of Oneself (2005, New York: Fordham University Press), selections.
Thursday, Feminist Political Theory 6: Debates
Allisen Stone, “Towards a Genealogical Feminism: A Reading of Judith Butler’s Political Thought,” Contemporary Political Theory, 2005, 4, pp. 4-24.
Catherine Mills, “Contesting the Political: Butler and Foucault on Power and Resistance; Journal of Political Philosophy; Sep. 2003, Vol. 11 Issue 3, pp. 253-272, 20p.