Introductory description

ECTCS is designed to allow sustained and intensive engagement with selected traditions of classic and contemporary critical theory. The module examines two interrelated topics: (1) the future of work (encompassing theories of automation, digital labour, social reproduction, Afrofuturism, queer futures and post-capitalism); and (2) the question of ecological futures (involving readings on climate breakdown, environmental justice, decolonising green movements, eco-utopias/dystopias and debates around the Anthropocene/ Capitalocene). Each strand is anchored by a literary or cultural work that extends and fleshes out the implications of the theory covered.

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.

Term 1: The Future of Work

Week 1: Introduction
J. M. Keynes, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” (1930)
David Graeber, “A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse” (2013) (https://thebaffler.com/salvos/a-practical-utopians-guide-to-the-coming-collapse)

Week 2: What is Work?
Karl Marx, “The Dual Character of the Labour Embodied in Commodities,” Capital Vol. 1 [1867] (Penguin, 1976): 131-37
Amelia Horgan, “Work’s Fantasy” and “Work, Capitalism and Capitalist Work,” Lost in Work (Pluto, 2021)

Week 3: The Problem of Work
Kathi Weeks, “Introduction: The Problem of Work” and “Mapping the Work Ethic,” The Problem of Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Duke UP, 2011)
Theodor W. Adorno, “Free Time,” The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. J. M. Bernstein, (Routledge, 1992): 162-70

Week 4: Accelerationism vs. Degrowth
Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, “Introduction,” “Left Modernity,” “The Future Isn’t Working” and “Post-Capitalist Imaginaries,” Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World without Work (Verso, 2015)
Jason Hickel, “Pathways to a Postcapitalist World,” Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (William Heineman, 2021)

Week 5: Rise of the Robots?
Aaron Benanav, “The Automation Discourse,” “Labor’s Global Deindustrialization” and “Necessity and Freedom,” Automation and the Future of Work (Verso, 2020)

Week 6: Reading week

Week 7: Gender and Emotional Labour
Silvia Federici, “Wages against Housework” [1975], Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (PM Press, 2012): 15-22
Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Exploring the Managed Heart,” The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (University of California Press, 1983): 3-23

Week 8: Afrofuturism / Undercommons
Kodwo Eshun, “Further Considerations on Afrofuturism,” CR: New Centennial Review 3.2 (Summer 2003): 287-302
Moten, Fred and Stefano Harney, “The University and the Undercommons,” “Debt and Study” and “Fantasy in the Hold,” The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (Minor Compositions, 2013)
Listen: Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, George Clinton, Drexciya
Watch: John Akromfah, The Last Angel of History (1996)

Week 9: Queering the Future
José Esteban Muñoz, “Feeling Utopia” and “Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism,” Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York University Press, 2009)

Week 10: Earthseed
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (Headline, 2019 [1993])

Term 2: Sex and Capitalism

Week 1: Introduction

Week 2
Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be? (Vintage, 2014)
*
Leslie Kern, from Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-made World (Verso, 2021)

Week 3
Michaela Coel, I May Destroy You (BBC/HBO, 2020)
*
Katherine Angel, from Tomorrow Sex Will be Good Again (Verso, 2021)

Week 4
Torry Peters, Detransition, Baby (Penguin, 2021)
*
Alan Sears, “Body Politics: The Social Reproduction of Sexualities,” in Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, ed. Tithi Bhattacharya (Pluto, 2017)

Week 5
Tangerine, dir. Sean Baker (Magnolia Pictures, 2015)
*
Juno Mac and Molly Smith, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights (Verso, 2018)

Week 7
Andrea Lawlor, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Picador, 2020)
*
Andrea Long Chu, Females (Verso, 2021)

Week 8
Elena Ferrante, The Lost Daughter, trans. Ann Goldstein (Europa Editions, 2008)
*
Amia Srinivasan, The Right to Sex (Bloomsbury, 2021)

Week 9
Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs, trans. Sam Bett and David Boyd (Picador, 2020)
*
Natalie Fiennes, Behind Closed Doors: Sex Education Transformed (Pluto, 2019)

Week 10
Han Kang, The Vegetarian, trans. Deborah Smith (Portobello Books, 2015)
*
Carol Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (Bloomsbury, 2015)

Learning outcomes

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

• Identify and critically assess significant tenets and claims within the field of modern critical and cultural theory.
• Understand and evaluate the argumentative concerns, traditions and methodological approaches within a variety of analytic modes, together with their formal and rhetorical strategies.
• Enhance the ability to make abstract connections between individual ideas and conceptual frameworks.
• Gain confidence in understanding, interrogating and applying a variety of theoretical positions.
• Broaden awareness of the relation of critical-theoretical arguments to the general study of literary and cultural works.

Indicative reading list

Amelia Horgan, “Work’s Fantasy” and “Work, Capitalism and Capitalist Work,” from Lost in Work (2021)
Marx, “The Dual Character of the Labour Embodied in Commodities,” Capital Vol. 1 [1867]
Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (20110
Theodor W. Adorno, “Free Time" (1969)
Aaron Benanav, from Automation and the Future of Work (2020)
Mark Fisher, from Postcapitalist Desire (2021)
Silvia Federici, “Wages against Housework” (1975)
Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Exploring the Managed Heart,” The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983)
Kodwo Eshun, “Further Considerations on Afrofuturism,” New Centennial Review (2003)
José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009)
Katherine Angel, from Tomorrow Sex Will be Good Again (2021)

Research element

Independent research required for writing essays and creating podcasts/video presentations.

Interdisciplinary

Exploration of a variety of theoretical approaches drawn from across the arts and social sciences.

Subject specific skills

• Ability to identify and critically assess significant tenets and claims within the field of modern critical and cultural theory;
• Ability to recognise historical contexts shaping critical debates;
• Ability to broaden awareness of the relation of critical-theoretical arguments to the general study of literary and cultural works.
• Enhanced confidence in understanding, interrogating and applying a variety of theoretical positions.

Transferable skills

• Ability to work individually as well as a member of a group;
• Ability to construct well supported arguments and express them plausibly in both oral and written forms;
• Ability to recognise the relative values of web-based and multimedia resources;
• Enhanced ability to make abstract connections between individual ideas and conceptual frameworks;
• Enhanced ability to work efficiently and professionally toward stated deadlines.