HUMN 301 – Modern Critical Theory

Comparative Humanities

Course Logistics:

HUMN 301.01
TR 1-2:22, Biol 304
Instructor: Professor John Hunter, Program in Comparative Humanities
Office: Carnegie 209 D (access through 209 A)
Office Hours: T3-4, W 1-3 or by appointment
Phone: 7-1549
Email: jchunter@bucknell.edu

Course Description:

When we think of the “theory” underlying any branch of knowledge, we often think of the objective general principles around which a given body of thought is organized, whether it is physics, elementary school teaching, or pottery. One of the 20th century’s most important intellectual currents, however, was the cluster of ideas and methods known, since the late 1940s, as “critical theory,” which may be loosely defined as theorizing which rejects the possibility that thought can be “neutral” and which seeks to transform its object of study by redefining or reorienting it. As such, it has always had to mediate between the methods, claims, and prejudices of philosophy (which, as a discipline, has always been suspicious of it), historical contingency (considered as both the engine of and arena for material change), and rhetoric (because the affect and effects of language have necessarily been part of critical theory’s purview). This has been reflected in the attention that we will pay to the historical field in which each theory arises, but does not imply that they are determined in any simplistic way. All that is certain in critical theory is that there can be no independent, self-supporting contexts for thought.

Critical theory has been a crucial engine for debate in all of the humanities and social sciences (and to a lesser extent in the physical sciences as well), in architecture, in media theory, and in many other fields. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the ongoing cultural importance of critical theory: how it came into being, and where it is headed now. Attention will also be paid to the way in which the methods of critical theory have been (from time to time) used for “conservative” rather than “progressive” political agendas. The course will be organized under four of the most important rubrics for critical theory: Marxism; Freud and psychoanalysis; structural linguistics; and theories of gender and sexuality. This subject is (hopefully) of broad general interest, but is especially relevant for anyone considering graduate work in the humanities or social sciences.

Book List:

Required:

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (Norton)
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (McGraw-Hill)
Robert Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader (Norton)

E-Reserves or photocopies:

Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” and “From Work to Text” from Image, Music, Text, trans.
      Stephen Heath, New York: Hill and Wang, 1977.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. And ed. H. M. Parshley, New York: Vintage, 1989.
Edmund Burke, Selections from Reflections on the Revolution in France, online edition prepared by John
      Hunter.
Judith Butler, Selections from Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 10th Anniversary
      Edition, New York: Routledge, 1999.
---, “Bodies That Matter,” from Bodies That Matter, New York: Routledge, 1993.
---, “No it’s not anti-semitic,” London Review of Books 25.16, August 21, 2003, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n16/butl02.html
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, Corrected Edition, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Baltimore:
      Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
---, “Différance,” from Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
      1982.
Niall Ferguson, “America: an Empire in Denial,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 28, 2003,
      http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i29/29b00701.htm
Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, and History” and “Nietzsche, Freud, Marx” from Aesthetics,
      Method, and Epistemology, ed. James D. Faubion, Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Vol. 2, New York: The New Press, 1998.
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. Joyce Crick, introd. Ritchie Robertson, New York: Oxford
      University Press, 1999.
Max Horkheimer, “The Social Function of Philosophy,” Selections from “Traditional Theory and Critical
      Theory,” and “Art and Mass Culture” from Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell et al, New York: Continuum, 1972.
Fredric Jameson, “Marxism and Postmodernism” and “‘End of Art’ or ‘End of History?’” from The
      Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern 1983-1998, New York: Verso, 1998.
Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book I: Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953-54, ed.
      Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. John Forrester, New York: Norton, 1991.
---, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan - Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the technique of
      Psychoanalysis 1954-55, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans., Sylvana Tomaselli, notes, John Forrester. New York: Norton, 1991.
---, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan - Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-60, ed. Jacques-Alain
      Miller, trans., Dennis Porter, New York: Norton, 1992.
---, Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink, New York: Norton, 2002
Diogenes Laertius, “Crates, Metrocles, Hipparchia,” from Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans R. D.
      Hicks, New York: Putnam, 1925.
Michèle Le Doeuff, Hipparchia’s Choice: an Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, etc., trans. Trista
      Selous, Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth,” from Critical Theory Since 1965, ed. Hazard Adams
      and Leroy Searle, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1986.
Toril Moi, What is a Woman and Other Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Mary Wollstonecraft, Selections from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, online edition prepared by
      John Hunter.
Slavoj Zizek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real – Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates, New York:
      Verso, 2002.

Reliable Web Sites:

Assignments:

Journals (80%) – almost every week, you will be required to write a 2-3 page paper on the readings for a given class. It will be due at the beginning of class, and I will assign you a topic.

OR

Journals (40%) – seven journals on weeks that I will decide. Same rules as above

Essay (40%) – a research essay that makes use of one or more of the bodies of theory that we have examined here to a text or issue that is outside the course. I will require a first draft (on November 20) and a research prospectus (December 2) as parts of this project, which will be due on the last day of classes.

Class Participation (20 %) – the class participation grade will reflect the energy with which you created and enlivened the debates in this class. Attendance will not be taken because (as both Augustine and Derrida demonstrate in their different ways) mere physical presence is overrated. It is your engagement that matters. It does not have to be enthusiastic (intelligent skepticism and critique are always welcome), but it does have to be respectful of the text and the rest of the class.

Contractual Obligations:

All late assignments will be penalized at a rate of one grade unit per day (i.e. a B becomes a B- and so forth). Technological excuses for lateness (“My printer cartridge ran out . . .”; “My roommate borrowed my laptop for the week-end . . .”; “My dog ate my hard drive . . .” etc.) will not be accepted, so please don’t try them. Use your creative energy on your writing instead, and try to spare yourself the anguish caused by the last-minute-hellride method of essay composition. Late journals will not be accepted at all unless you have a medical or university-activity related reason.

Extensions for the essays will be readily granted, provided that you ask me at least a week in advance. After that point, they will be granted very selectively, usually only for medical reasons.

A word on plagiarism: I expect you all to know what plagiarism is in all of its various forms. If I detect it, you will get a zero for the course and my best effort to have you kicked out of the university. Please do not be tempted by the many essay-providers on the Net: I know where they are too, we have access to detection software, and the wares they peddle are usually the products of the various paper-swapping arrangements that exist within fraternities (i.e. they are stupid, as well as unethical). If you are not sure about what does and does not constitute plagiarism, PLEASE come and talk to me—I will be happy to explain it to you.

Schedule:

Responses to Two Crises 

Week One. August 28.                               1844/45: Thought and Material Life

R: Course Introduction
Karl Marx, “For a Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing” (1844)
“Theses on Feuerbach” (1845)

Week Two. September 2 and 4.                 1930s and 40s: Crisis and The Dimensions of Theory

T: Max Horkheimer, “The Social Function of Philosophy”; “Traditional and Critical Theory”
R: ---, “Art and Mass Culture”

Revolutions, Real and Imagined: Gender and the Quest for Political Freedom

Week Three. September 9 and 11.             1789-91: The French Revolution

T: Diogenes Laertius, “Crates, Metrocles, Hipparchia” from Lives of Eminent Philosophers (3rd c. CE)
    Edmund Burke, selection from Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
    Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, intro and chapter one (1790)
R: ---, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, chapters 2 and 3

Week Four. September 16 and 18.             1949: Post-War Existentialism

T: de Beauvoir, “Since the French Revolution” and “Myth and Reality” from The Second Sex (1949)

                                                              1990s: Philosophy and/or Performativity?

R: Michèle Le Doeuff, “Fourth Notebook” from Hipparchia’s Choice, 211-30, 255-66, 284-92 (1989)

Week Five. September 23 and 25.

T: Judith Butler, “Preface” and “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire” from Gender Trouble (1989)
R: ---, “Bodies That Matter” from Bodies That Matter (1993)

Week Six. September 30 and October 2.

T: Moi, “What is a Woman?” from What is a Woman and Other Essays (1998)

Marx and Cultural Materialism

1850s and 1860s: Revolution and Reaction

R: Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” (1852)

Week Seven. October 7 and 9.

T: ---, Capital, Volume One, 302-29
R: ---, Capital, Volume One, 329-61

Week Eight. October 14 and 16.                 1980s and 90s: Post-Revolution and Cultural Studies

T: FALL BREAK
R: Fredric Jameson, “Marxism and Postmodernism”
---, “‘End of Art’ or ‘End of History?’”

Week Nine. October 21 and 23.                 1910s: The End of Philology

Reading the Languages of the World: Structuralism and Poststructuralism

T: de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 1-23, 65-98
R: de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 101-22, 191-96, 212-24

Week Ten. October 28 and 30.                   1950s and 1960s: Structuralism

T: Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth”
    Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” “From Work to Text”
R: Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” “Nietzsche, Freud, Marx”

Week Eleven. November 4 and 6.               1960s: Poststructuralism

T: Jacques Derrida, Selection from Of Grammatology (1967)
R: Jacques Derrida, “Différance” from Margins of Philosophy (1972)

The Incomplete Copernican Revolution: Freud, Lacan, and the Fractured Self

Week Twelve. November 11 and 13.           1900s and 1930: Traumas of Modernity

T: Sigmund Freud, Selections from The Interpretation of Dreams
R: ---, Civilization and Its Discontents, 11-54

Week Thirteen. November 18 and 20.         1930 and 1950s: After the War

T: --- Civilization and Its Discontents, 54-92
R: Jacques Lacan, Selections from Écrits and Seminar I

Week Fourteen. November 25 and 27.         1950s: Intimations of Postmodernity

T: ---, Selections from Seminar II and VII
R: THANKSGIVING

Theorizing the Present: 9/11 and the Obscenity of Thought

Week Fifteen. December 2 and 4.                 2003: Thinking the Present

T: Slavoj Zizek, Selection from Welcome to the Desert of the Real (2003)
R: Judith Butler, “No, it’s not anti-semitic” (2003)
    Niall Ferguson, “America: an Empire in Denial” (2003)

Week Sixteen. December 9.

T: Course Conclusion