Culture and Identity in Late Capitalism
ENL 547
T/TH 12:30-1:45
Professor Annie McClanahan ([email protected])
Syllabus is very tentative and subject to change.
Course Description:
What does it mean to live in a period of capitalist crisis? What does it mean to forge one’s
identity according to the imperatives of efficiency, self-management, and profitability? How
does it feel to be raced and/or gendered in a culture that is ostensibly “post-racial” and equitable?
How is the experience of education transformed by the debt you incur to pay for it? We’ll
discuss these questions and many more by reading both critical theory and personal essays on the
experience of daily life in contemporary “late capitalism.” This class does not require that you
hold any particular political position but it does require that you be open to political
conversations and that you believe in the value of such conversations.
Required Texts:
Max Haiven, Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power ($19)
The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection ($10)
And a large course reader (est. cost $80)
Note: Books will be available at Peoples Books Cooperative, not at the student union bookstore.
Do not purchase the above texts in advance as they may change. If the cost of the course texts
may prohibit you from taking this class, email me at [email protected] for possible
assistance.
Course Schedule
MONEY
Week One:
Selections from David Harvey, Brief History of Neoliberalism; Mike Konzcal, “Buying the
Future”
Week Two:
Selections from Benjamin Kunkel, Utopia or Bust; Selections from Randy Martin, The
Financialization of Everyday Life
Week Three:
Selections from Max Haiven, Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power
Week Four:
Selections from Andrew Ross, Creditocracy; Selections from Gary Rivlin, BROKE, USA;
Selections from Richard Dienst, The Bonds of Debt; Morgan Adamson, “The Financialization of
Student Life”
GENDER
Week Five:
Selections from Laurie Penny, Unspeakable Things; “You Are Too Much,” Hannah Black
Week Six:
Selections from Nina Power, One Dimensional Woman; TBD
WORK
Week Seven:
Selections from Ivor Southwood, Non-Stop Inertia; Molly Osberg, “Inside the Barista Class”
Week Eight:
Selections from Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism; Miya Tokumitsu, “In the Name of Love”
Week Nine:
Barbara Ehenreich, Nickel and Dimed; TBD
RACE
Week Ten:
Ta-Nehsi Coates, “The Case for Reparations”; Chris Chen, “The Limit Point of Capitalist
Equality”
Week Eleven:
Selections from Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow; selections from Alice Goffman, On the
Run
SCHOOL
Week Twelve:
Selections from Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, The Undercommons; Astra Taylor,
“Unschooling”
Week Thirteen:
Malcolm Harris, “Bad Education”; Research and Destroy, “Communique on an Absent Future”
RIOTS AND REVOLUTIONS
Week Fourteen:
George Ciccarello Maher, “Planet of Slums, Age of Riots” and “Chronicle of a Riot Foretold”;
Joshua Clover, “World Systems Riot”
Week Fifteen:
The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection