borromean danish!
here is the silly-bus i made for my directed reading this summer (it’s almost wrapped). i got it approved for 2 credits (one of which satisfies “one elective credit in “politics and policy” – ha!). because of this, and because i worked my ass off since i entered the program a year ago, i will be done all of my class requirements by mid-july. that means i have one full year with no hassles (minus teaching) to WORK ON MY THESIS. ya ya ya ! i’ll probably keep my job at the vid store. god. the vid store.
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE POLITICAL
May – August 2009
Wednesdays and Sundays 3-6pm
Spring/Summer Directed Reading Course
This directed reading course will focus on the psychoanalytic teachings of both Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan and the way that thay have been reinterpreted in modern works of political philosophy. It will begin with an introduction of Freudian psychoanalysis before diving into the rich and complex works left to us by Lacan. After the first part, the course will examine modern thinkers who utilize Lacan’s work in order to think the political today with an emphasis on “the crises of democracy.” The course will conclude by approaching the problem of the return of the religious in a “post-secular” world.
Grading:
Participation – 10%
First essay outline: Psychoanalytic Foundations (1 pg) – 5% (Due May 18)
First long essay: Psychoanalytic Foundations (15-20 pgs) – 40% (Due June 1)
Second essay outline: Political Applications and the Return of the Religious (1pg) – 5% (Due July 27)
Second long essay: Political Applications and the Return of the Religious (15-20 pgs) – 40% (Due Aug 10)
References:
Jean Laplanche – The Language of Psycho-Analysis
Dylan Evans – An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis
Lacanian Ink – www.lacan.com
No Subject – www.nosubject.com
SECTION ONE: PSYCHOANALYTIC FOUNDATIONS———————————————————————–
WEEK 1: Freud and the Political
– Sigmund Freud. Civilization and its Discontent.
– Sigmund Freud. “The Dissection of the Psychical Personality.”
– Anthony Elliot. “Psychoanalysis and Social Theory.” The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. pg. 133-159.
– Terry Eagleton. Trouble with Strangers: A Study of Ethics.
WEEK 2: Freud and the Political Cont.
– Sigmund Freud. Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
– Sigmund Freud. Moses and Monotheism.
– Jacques Derrida. Archive Fever.
– Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi. Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable.
WEEK 3: Lacan’s Return to Freud
– Jacques Lacan. “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis.” Écrits: A Selection. pg. 31-106.
– Lorenzo Chiesa. “The Unconscious Structured Like a Language.” Subjectivity and Otherness. pg. 34-59.
WEEK 4: Lacan’s Return to Freud Cont.
– Jacques Lacan. “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious.” Écrits: A Selection. pg. 281-312.
– Bruce Fink. “Reading The Subversion of the Subject.” Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely. pg. 106-128.
– Philippe Van Haute. Against Adaptation: Lacan’s “Subversion” of the Subject.
SECTION TWO: POLITICAL APPLICATIONS———————————————————————————
WEEK 5: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
– Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
– Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. “One or Several Wolves?” A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. pg. 26-38.
WEEK 6: Radical Democracy
– Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. “Beyond the Positivity of the Social: Antagonisms and Hegemony” and “Hegemony and Radical Democracy.” Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. pg. 93-194.
– Ernesto Laclau. Emancipation(s).
– Chantal Mouffe. The Return of the Political.
WEEK 7: Badiou and the Return of the Universal Truth-Event
– Alain Badiou. Ethics.
– Alain Badiou. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism.
– Alain Badiou. Metapolitics.
– John Roberts. “The ‘Returns to Religion’: Messianism, Christianity and the Revolutionary Tradition. Part I: ‘Wakefulness to the Future’.” Historical Materialism. 2008 – 16 – 2.
WEEK 8: Žižek’s Subversive Cartesianism
– Slavoj Žižek. The Sublime Object of Ideology.
– Slavoj Žižek. The Ticklish Subject.
– Slavoj Žižek. “Neighbors and Other Monsters: A Plea for Ethical Violence.” The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology. pg. 134-190.
– John Roberts. “The ‘Returns to Religion’: Messianism, Christianity and the Revolutionary Tradition. Part II: The Pauline Tradition.” Historical Materialism. 2008 – 16 – 3.
SECTION THREE: THE RETURN OF THE RELIGIOUS———————————————————————-
WEEK 9: The New Lacanians
– Julia Kristeva. “Psychoanalysis-A Counter Depressant,” “Life and Death of Speech,” “Holbein’s Dead Christ” and “Dostoevsky, the Writing of Suffering, and Forgiveness.” Black Sun. pg. 1-68, 105-138 and 173-218.
– Julia Kristeva. Revolution in Poetic Language and Powers of Horror. The Portable Kristeva. pg 27-92 and pg. 229-263.
– Jean Laplanche. “Interpretation between Determination and Hermeneutics: a Restatement of the Problem.” Essays on Otherness. pg. 140-168.
WEEK 10: The Spectre, the Sacred and the Profane
– Jacques Derrida. “Conjuring-Marxism,” “Wears and Tears,” “In the Name of the Revolution, the Double Barricade” and “Apparition of the Inapparent.” Spectres of Marx. pg. 49-176.
– Jacques Derrida. “The Phantom Friend Returning (in the Name of Democracy)” and “On Absolute Hostility: The Cause of Philosophy and the Spectre of the Political.” Politics of Friendship. pg. 75-137.
– John Caputo. “The Messianic.” The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion. pg. 117-159.
– Georges Bataille. Theory of Religion.
– Giorgio Agamben. Profanations.
– Leland de la Durantaye. “Homo Profanus: Giorgio Agamben’s Profane Philosophy.” boundary 35, no. 3 (September 1, 2008): 27-62. http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~english/Department/faculty/delaDurantaye/deladur.homo.profanus.pdf
WEEK 11: Politics of the Other
– Emmanual Levinas. “Transcendence and Height” and “Peace and Proximity.” Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings. pg. 11-32 and 161-170.
– Simon Critchley. “Introduction.” The Cambridge Companion to Levinas. pg. 1-32.
– Roger Burggraeve. “Violence and the Vulnerable Face of the Other: The Vision of Emmanuel Levinas on Moral Evil and Our Responsibility.” Journal of Social Philosophy; Spring1999, Vol. 30 Issue 1, p29-45, 17.
– Howard Caygill. Levinas and the Political
– Simon Critchley. “Five Problems in Levinas’s View of Politics and the Sketch of a Solution to them.” Political Theory, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 172-185, April 2004.
– Asher Horowitz. “Beyond Rational Peace: On the Possibility/Necessity of a Levinasian Hyperpolitics.” Difficult Justice: Commentaries on Levinas and Politics. pg. 27-47.
– Gad Horowitz. “Aporia and Messiah in Derrida and Levinas.” Difficult Justice: Commentaries on Levinas and Politics. pg. 307-328.
WEEK 12: Political Theologies
– Claude Lefort. “The Permanence of the Theologico-Political?” Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World. pg. 148-187.
– Jean-Luc Nancy. “Church, State, Resistance.” Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World. pg. 102-112.
– Earnesto Laclau. “On the Names of God.” Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World. pg. 137-147.
– Chantal Mouffe. “Religion, Liberal Democracy, and Citizenship.” Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World. pg. 318-326.
– Terry Eagleton. “Culture & Barbarism: Metaphysics in a Time of Terrorism.” Commonweal. March 27, 2009 / Volume CXXXVI, Number 6. http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=2488
– Terry Eagleton. “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching.” London Review of Books. 19 October 2006. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html
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