Short Course Description
Critical theory has led to a radical shift in modes of thinking about social relationships, justice, and morality, about science, reason, and political and economic systems, about sexuality, liberty, and the psyche, and even about thought itself. This vital and turbulent surge in twentieth century thought, from headwaters commonly located in the Frankfurt School, has rendered a merciless verdict against the Logos, demanding from thinkers and from thought a radical intervention in reality. The tense conversation that critical theory has undertaken with the thought of the Enlightenment has encompassed domains of both the public and private spheres while challenging the boundaries between the two. However, more than anything, critical theory distinguished itself from other trends and schools in the history of philosophy in its adoption by those previously with no place (and no part) there: The woman, and especially the black woman, the refugee and the oppressed, the worker's son, immigrants, LGBTQs, the rebels and the governed (who are conscious of being governed). As the semester unfolds, we shall tell the story of critique from the eve of the French revolution (Voltaire, Kant, l'abbe Raynal, Condorcet, De Gouges...), through the storms it sparked in nineteenth century philosophy (Hegel, Marx, Engels, Proudhon, Nietzsche...) and the roots it struck in the first part of the twentieth century (Freud, Goldman, Gramsci, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse...). We will focus on those moments that founded critical theory as we know it today (From Arendt to Althusser and Foucault; from Fanon and Lorde to Butler and Ahmed) and finally we will ask: Where is critical theory heading today?
Full Syllabus
