Critical Theory Emphasis

We will explore the relation of neopragmatism to Foucauldian theories of power and subjectivity by first working through Richard Rorty's discussions of language, selfhood, and community. We will then take up Foucault's readings of the Classical Greek tradition of ethics and politics as a way of understanding the Nietzschean geanalogies of his later work. The course will pivot on a comparison of Rorty's and Foucault's rejections of "ideology" with various postmarxist uses of the term. To illustrate and comment on this comparison, we will analyze interpretation, political agency, and cultural conflict in Frederick Douglass's Narrative. This course can be taken as a proseminar (presentation and exam) or seminar (presentation and term paper). Students interested in taking this course should leave a seminar request form in my mailbox.

Reading list includes:
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
William James, Pragmatism
Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism
Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure
Paul Rabinow, ed. The Foucault Reader
Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School
Giles Gunn, Thinking Across the American Grain: Ideology, Intellect, and the New Pragmatism
Essays by Marx and Engels, Louis Althusser, Kenneth Burke, Nancy Fraser, Linda Alcoff, Stuart Hall, Paul de Man, Clifford Geertz, Judith Butler, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.