Introductory description

This module aims at providing students with a solid understanding of key elements in critical theory from the original framework of the Frankfurt School to contemporary developments. Students will relate critical theory with social and political issues in historical context and in the present and will develop understanding of race, gender, and class issues in a theoretical perspective.
Students will develop a solid understanding of various forms of critical and cultural theory that understand literary texts, film, and other media as social texts.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1: Introduction. Presentation on "Cruel to be Kin(d)". Assigned Texts: Jacques Derrida. "In the Name of the Revolution: the Double Barricade (impure 'impure impure history of ghosts". In Specters of Marx. Routledge, 1994. 1 18-155. Judith Butler. "Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect". In Frames of War. 33-62.
Week 2: Presentation on "Culture Matters". Assigned Text: Rob Nixon. "Introduction". In Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard UP, 2011. 1-44.
Week 3: Presentation on "Politics of the Damned". Assigned Text: Phillip Mirowski. "One More Red Nightmare: The Crisis That Didn't Change Much of Anything". In Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown. Verso, 2013. 1 1-44.
Week 4: Presentation on "We the People". Excerpts from Étienne Balibar. We, the People of Europe? Princeton UP, 2003. Press clippings.
Week 5: Presentation on "Collectivity". Invisible Committee. Now. Semiotext(e), 2017.
Week 6: Presentation on "Cri-ti-que". Assigned texts: Étienne Balibar. "Critique in the 21 st Century". Radical Philosophy: Philosophical Journal of the Independent Left 200 (2016).
Week 7: Presentation on "Is the Post- in Postcritical like the Neo- in Neoliberal?" Assigned
Texts: Kwame Anthony Appiah. "Is the Post-in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?" Critical Inquiry 17.2 (1991): 336-357. Rita Felski. "Introduction" and "The Stakes of Suspicion". In The Limits of Critique U Chicago Press, 2015. 1-52.
Week 8: Presentation on "Postimperial Lisbon". Assigned Texts: Bill Schwartz.
"Postcolonial Times: The Visible and the Invisible" in Felix Driver and David Gilbert, eds.
Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display, and Identity. Manchester University Press, 1999.
268-273. David Harvey. "London 201 1 : Feral Capitalism Hits the Streets". In Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. Verso, 2012. 155- 158.
Week 9: Presentation on "New fascisms". Phillip K. Dick. The Man in the High Castle.
Excerpts from press and other essays in "The New Fascism Syllabus"
(http://www.thehistoryinquestion.com/syllabus/interrogating-the-past/the-syllabus/).
Week 10: Presentation on "We Are All Mad Here". Assigned Texts: Excerpts from
Theodor Adorno. Minima Moralia. Verso, 2006. Thomas Docherty. "Force or the Body
Politic and the 'Sovereignty of Nature'". In Universities at War. Sage Swifts, 2014. 1-45.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Have attained a complex understanding of some of the key issues involved in cultural critique, regarding the study of gender, race, and class in the 21C.
• Demonstrate an advanced understanding of critical theory from the Frankfurt School to the present and evaluate different currents within it.
• Demonstrate the conceptual ability to read literary and other cultural artifacts as social texts.
• Develop sustained and critical arguments in relation to the intersections of the social, political and cultural.

Indicative reading list

Adorno, Theodore Minima Moralia. 2006.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. "Is the Post-in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?' Critical
Inquiry 17.2 (1991): 336-357.
Arendt, Hannah. On Violence. 1970.
Balibar, Étienne. . We, the People of Europe? 2003.
Balibar, Étienne. Citizenship. 2015.
Balibar, Étienne. "Critique in the 21 st Century". Radical Philosophy: Philosophical Journal of the Independent Left 200. 2016.
Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neolibera/ism's Stealth Revolution. 2017.
Browne, Simone, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. 2015.
Butler, Judith. Frames of War. 2009.
Derrida, Jacques. Spectres of Marx. 1994
Dick, Phillip K. The Man in the High Castle. 1962.
Docherty, Thomas. Universities at War. 2014.
Driver, Felix and David Gilbert, eds. Imperia/ Cities: Landscape, Display, and Identity. 1999.
Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique. 2015.
Harvey, David. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. 2012.
Invisible Committee. Now. 2017.
Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious. 1981.
Jameson, Fredric. A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present. 2002.
Jameson, Fredric. An American Utopia. 2016.
Mirowski, Phillip. Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown. 2013.
Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. 2011.
Rancière, Jacques. The Intervals of Cinema. 2014.
Rancière, Jacques. The Edges of Fiction. 2019.
Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. 2017.
The New Fascism Syllabus (htto://www.thehistorvinauestion.com/svllabus/interrogating-thepast/the-svllabus/)

Subject specific skills

Have attained a complex understanding of some of the key issues involved in cultural critique, regarding the study of gender, race, and class in the 21C.

Demonstrate an advanced understanding of critical theory from the Frankfurt School to the present and evaluate different currents within it.

Transferable skills

Demonstrate the conceptual ability to read literary and other cultural artifacts as social texts.

Develop sustained and critical arguments in relation to the intersections of the social, political and cultural.