Alternative Political Theory
Dr. Claudia Leeb
Office location: 204 Silsby
Office phone: 603-646-2548
office hours: by appointment
Course Schedule:
Week 1, Tuesday, March 31, 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.
Week 1, Thursday, April 2, 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, April 7, 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), 833-859.
Week 2, Thursday, April 9, 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, April 14, 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.
Week 3, Thursday, April 16, 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, April 21, 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.
Week 4, Thursday, April 23, 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, April 28: 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.
Week 5, Thursday, April 30, 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, May 5, Post-Structuralism 3: Jacques Derrida II
Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (1994, New York: Routledge), selections.
Week 6, Tuesday, May 7, Post-Structuralism 3: 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, May 12, Feminist Political Theory 1: Iris Marion Young I
Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press), selections.
Week 7, Tuesday, May 14, 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, May 19, 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.
Week 8, Tuesday, May 21, 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, May 26, Feminist Political Theory 5: Judith Butler II
Giving an Account of Oneself (2005, New York: Fordham University Press), selections.
Week 9, Tuesday, May 28, Feminist Political Theory 3: 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.
3rd paper due