Date

Topic

 Reading Assignments

Writing assignments due

Jan. 10

Introductory Session

None

Jan. 17

Jan. 24

Nietzsche, Preface and First Essay fromThe Genealogy of Morality;

Jesse Prinz, "Genealogies of Morals: Nietzsche's Method Compared" (requres star ID login)

Sabina Lovibond, “Selflessness and Other Moral Baggage”,

Jan. 31

Critical concepts: Alienation, Fetishism, reification

Marx, Alienated Labor
Fromm, Alienation

Marx, Fetishism of Commodities;
Cohen, Fetishism

Lukacs, "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat" (read as much as you can)
Honneth, "Reification and Recognition"

Optional extra reading:

Roberts, "Dialectic of Enlightenment"
Whitebook, "The Marriage of Marx and Freud: Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory"

Response paper

Feb. 7

Selections from Freud for Beginners.  
(If you find yourself wanting a more straightforward presentation of Freud’s life and work, the Wikipedia article is not too bad.) 

The article by Joel Whitebook that I sent you last week has brief and fairly readable section (pp.82-89) on Marcuse.  I do not recommend the rest of the article at this time.  Here’s the link again:  "The Marriage of Marx and Freud: Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory"

There’s a lot of writing by Marcuse on the Web, and quite a few videos.  Here are my minimal recommendations :

1. The introduction to One Dimensional Man:  http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odmintro.html
2. The first half (approximately) of Chapter one, which discusses the difference betwee “true” and “false” needs: http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odm1.html
3. The second half (approximately) of Chapter 3, which discusses “repressive desubimation”.:  http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odm3.html
   
   (the pdf version I sent you on Friday is better than the text at these links. It's on the web here: One-Dimensional Man, 2nd ed.)
   
   First paper instructions
   

Response paper

Feb 14

Three essays by Marilyn Frye:

1. "Oppression"

2. "Sexism"

3. "A Note on Anger"

Response paper; position paper due

Feb. 21

Response paper

position paper due

Feb. 28

Catherine MacKinnon, "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory" (login with Star ID)

Optional extra: "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence" (login with Star ID)

Response paper; Position paper due

March 7

March 14

Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism

Albert Memmi. 1965 preface to The Colonizer and the Colonized

Albert Memmi, "Situations of the Colonized"

Franz Fanon, "The Lived Experience of the Black Man" (Chapter 5 of Black Skin, White Masks) -- This pdf is a bit blurry in my browser window, but it looks fine if you download the file and read it in a pdf reader like Adobe Acrobat.

Sandra Bartky, "On Psychological Oppression"

Response paper;

March 21

Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism, Chapters 8 and 9

A remembrance of Cedric Robinson by Robin Kelley

Response paper; position paper due

March 28

Response paper

April 4

Habermas, selections from "Discourse Ethics";
Thomas McCarthy, "Introduction" to Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action by Habermas

Rainer Forst, "The Ground of Critique: On the Concept of Human Dignity in Social Orders of Justification"

An interesting, but longer version of Forst's view is The Basic Right to Justification: Toward a Constructivist Conception of Human Rights

Response paper

April 11

Response paper; second paper instructions handed out

April 18

Amy Allen, "Conclusion: Truth, Reason, and History" from The End of Progress;

Michael Williams, "Wittgensteinian Contextualism is not Relativism" (Requires Metro State library log-in)

Response paper

Nancy Fraser, “From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump—and Beyond”;

Lee McIntyre, "Did Postmodernism Lead to Post-Truth?"

Bruno Latour, "Why Has Critique Run out of Steam?" (optional)