5AAEB076 - Special Topic: Theory, Politics, and Culture after the
1960s
Level/Semester taught:
Convenor:
Teaching Arrangements:
Credit Value:
Assessment:
Level 5
Seb Franklin
1x 1-hour seminar, 1x 1-hour lecture each week
15 credits
1 x 3,000 word essay (85%); KEATS reader
response/discussion forum (15%).
‘Theory, Politics, and Culture after the 1960s’ invites students to consider the ways in
which the investments of literary and critical theory—most centrally language, class, race,
gender, and sexuality—have intersected and overlapped in relation to socio-political
transformations from the 1970s to the present. Each week is organized around one or
more of these intersections, which we will address though discussions of critical and
literary texts and films. Topics of discussion will include: the relationship between waged
and unwaged work, and the systems of gender and race that are organized around the
poles of this relationship; the construction of categories that are presented as “normal”;
the category of the human; the relationship between finance and representation; the
politics of visibility; the relationship between aesthetics and social structure; the challenge
of trying to define the social, political, and cultural characteristics of the present (and the
recent past).
Schedule and Reading
Week 1: introduction – theory, politics, culture
This week functions as an introduction to the critical and methodological approaches
that broadly structure the module as a whole. Samuel Delany’s “the Tale of Old Venn”—
at once a fantasy novella and a theoretical demonstration of the relationship between
representation, capital, gender, and race—allows us to address the necessity of
understanding cultural and political phenomena as inseparable.
Essential reading
Samuel R. Delany, “The Tale of Old Venn,” in Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979; London: Grafton
Books, 1988).
Excerpts from Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (1986; London:
Zed Books, 2014).
Week 2: production/reproduction
This week focuses on the relationship between paid and unpaid work and the ways in
which this distinction is organized around binary constructions of gender. By thinking
about housework—the collection of unwaged but essential duties often presented as
‘women’s work’—we will address the complex of economic and cultural forces that
structure the gender distinction.
Essential reading/viewing
Jeanne Dilman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Dir. Chantal Ackerman, France,
1975).
Excerpts from Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist
Struggle (1975-present; Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012).
Excerpts from Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch (New York: Autonomedia, 2004).
Week 3: biopolitics
This week we will consider the relationship between space, race, and power. Foucault’s
concept of biopolitics—broadly put, the management of life as a mechanism of state
power—presents us with the opportunity to consider dynamics of inclusion and
marginalisation that function in increasingly complex ways in contemporary, globalised
culture.
Essential reading/viewing
Michel Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” in Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the
Collège de France, 1975-76, trans. David Macey (excerpts; New York: Picador, 2003).
Killer of Sheep (Dir. Charles Burnett, USA, 1978).
Week 4: human
This week we consider the ways in which the category of the human intersects with
discourses of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Both Alien and “A Cyborg Manifesto”
present situations and concepts that disrupt the distinctions between humans, machines,
and nonhuman animals. Examining the possibilities and anxieties that emerge when such
categories are disrupted allows us to think critically about identity and affinity.
Essential reading/viewing
Alien (Dir. Ridley Scott, USA, 1979).
Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in
the Late Twentieth Century” (1984).
Suggested further reading
Hortense J. Spillers, “Mama's Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,”
Diacritics 17:2 (1987)
Week 5: surface/depth
This week is focused on the concept of postmodernism developed by Fredric Jameson
and others in the early 1980s. By placing this material in the context of the previous
weeks’ discussions we will address the significance of Jameson’s text as well as its
historical and geographical blindspots.
Essential reading
Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” (1984).
bell hooks, “Postmodern Blackness,” Postmodernist Culture 1.1 (1990).
Week 6: reading week
No lecture or seminars.
Week 7: connections
This week we will consider themes, connections, and areas for further consideration that
have emerged across the module so far. No specific reading for this week – for seminars
please review your reading and notes from the first half of the course.
Week 8: ‘normal’
This week is focused on a conceptual structure that recurs across the course as a whole:
the concept of the ‘normal.’ Ideas of ‘normal’ behaviour, identity, and sexuality produce
and enforce dominant social structures in a range of contexts. By addressing these ideas
through critical work in feminist and queer theory we can begin to grasp both the ways in
which normativity functions across a range of discourses and the ways in which it might
be confronted and critiqued.
Essential reading
Excerpts from Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London:
Routledge, 1990).
Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, “What Does Queer Theory Teach Us about X?”
PMLA 110:3 (1995).
Week 9: neoliberalism
This week we examine the concept of neoliberalism, a term that is used increasingly
widely with varying levels of specificity. In addition to examining the historical, political,
and socio-economic aspects of the forces neoliberalism is used to describe, we will also
consider the ways in which these forces attempt to absorb critical and contestatory
discourses.
Essential reading
Wendy Brown, “Neo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy,” Theory and Event
7:1 (2003).
Nancy Fraser, “Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History,” New Left Review 56
(March-April 2009).
Suggested further reading
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979, trans.
Graham Burchell, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), Chapter 9.
Philip Mirowski, “The Thirteen Commandments of Neoliberalism,” The Utopian (July
2013), http://www.the-utopian.org/post/53360513384/the-thirteencommandments-of-neoliberalism.
Week 10: visibility
Building on previous discussions of normativity, this week we will discuss ideas of
visibility and invisibility and their relationship to politics and culture.
Essential reading
Michael Warner, “Introduction,” in Fear of A Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
Édouard Glissant, “For Opacity,” in Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing (excerpts; 1990;
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).
Week 11: recap/discussion
This week we will discuss the questions and concepts raised across the module as a
whole, and consider ways in which these ideas might function within literary and cultural
analysis. No new reading – please review your previous reading and notes, and come
prepared to discuss the ways in which they might inform your final essay and your future
work.
Week 12: Essay Consultations
No lecture or seminars