Critical Theory Emphasis

"Experience" plays a central, ambivalent, and politically charged role--explicitly or implicitly—in theoretical debates in all humanistic disciplines.  Joan Scott writes at the conclusion of her essay, "The Evidence of Experience":  "Experience is at once always already an interpretation and something that needs to be interpreted.  What counts as experience is neither self-evident nor straightforward; it is always contested, and always therefore political.  The study of experience, therefore, must call into question its originary status in historical explanation....Experience is, in this approach, not the origin of our explanation, but that which we want to explain."  The goal of this seminar is to explore a variety of philosophical positions on "experience" (empirical, Kant, Hegelian, phenomenological, pragmatic, hermeneutic) and a variety of discursive-theoretical spheres in which it is employed and criticized (identity politics, feminist standpoint theory, "situated knowledges," Critical Race Theory, gay/lesbian studies, queer theory).  Readings by (the likes of):  Bacon, Kant, Hegel, Dilthey, Heidegger, Peirce, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, Hartsock, Haraway, Patricia Williams, Spivak, Butler).

NOTE:  For the first meeting, students should read Joan Scott's essay (anthologized, among other places, in the Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader).