AP/POLS 3040
Modern Political Thought
2011

Download course outline in PDF format

Course Website: http://moodle10.yorku.ca
You will need your Passport York to sign in, then you will be directed to GS/POLS 6087.3 course website.

Course Description

POLS 3040.6 Modern Political Thought meshes political theory with digital imagery. The course operationalizes Gilles Deleuze claim that philosophical concepts are like sounds, images and colors. This will be accomplished through digital image/sound production of theoretical concepts. Film images, which I have videoed will accompany each lecture.  Course requirements include two short film productions relating to a theoretical concept; the films accompany the two essays.  I have scheduled extra office hours to assist with the film aspect of the course which is 15% of the grade. It is assumed that people do not have any film experience.

The idea is to transpose Martin Heidegger’s claim regarding technology, ‘that you can’t think technology technologically,’ to the techne of political thought. The argument is that you can’t think political theory simply with language, that is, inside the sayable in which it is produced.  Heidegger contended that the site from which to think technology is art.  POLS 3040 uses visual images to supplement and enhance philosophical concepts. We will learn to see the embodiment of theoretical concepts in the world and to produce image and text based political theory.

The thinkers/theorists the course will investigate are Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kojeve, Lacan, Ranciere, Foucault, Bataille, Butler, Nietzsche, Sorel, Heidegger, Schmitt, Marcuse, Benjamin, Derrida, Virilio and Zizek.

POLS 3040 begins with Ranciere’s The Ignorant School Master which contradicts the Enlightenment ideas of knowledge and mastery. The course then shifts to what is considered the core of Enlightenment thought: Kant’s work on universal history, enlightenment, and aesthetic judgment, Hegel’s writing on Master/Slave read through Kojeve and Marx’s critique of the material and intellectual impoverishment of the enlightenment. Lacan’s concept of the gaze is pursued to interrogate the subject-centered visuality of the Enlightenment. Kant’s understanding of enlightenment is revisited by Foucault. Butler’s work on self and gender interrupts enlightenment thought from the future.

Hegel’s work on aesthetics (Introduction to Lectures on Aesthetics) and Nietzsche’s anti-enlightenment hero Zarathustra are woven into first and second term readings.

The second part of POLS 3040 begins with Bataille’s idea of the sacred which exposes the underside of the enlightenment; while his notion of expenditure expands Marx’s concept of political economy to the limit. This is followed by the counter-enlightenment thought of Sorel and proceeds with an examination of the very different, equally astonishing and influential redefinitions of sovereignty through the diverse philosophical/political lenses of Schmitt and Bataille. These are followed by Heidegger’s critique of philosophy and the task of new thinking of the new.

Technology, violence, velocity, and resistance are sites of modern cum post-contemporary political thought. This discussion begins with Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence,’ followed by Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’  which integrates Benjamin’s critique into his political method of deconstruction. Zizek brings Schmitt’s concept of the friend/enemy and Benjamin’s violence together contending that three forms of violence – subjective, objective and systemic are inherent features of post-contemporary liberal capitalism. Virilio’s Speed and Politics theorizes violence, technology, and velocity as constituting the speed of the political. Heidegger’s ‘Question Concerning Technology,’ and Marcuse’s ‘Some Implications Concerning Modern Technology’ are read in tandem with Virilio’s critique of technology.

POLS 3040 is a lecture and seminar/tutorial course. The weekly course format is

Lecture: 1 hour and 45 minutes

Break: 10 minutes

Seminar/Tutorial: 50 minutes

The lectures will be filmed using Media Site and the lectures will be posted on our course website:http://moodle10.yorku.ca where they can be both viewed on line and downloaded as audio and video files.

Books

• G. F. W. Hegel, Introduction to Lectures on Aesthetics (Penguin)
• Alexandre Kojeve Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Cornell University Press)
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufman (Penguin)
• Jacques Ranciere, The Ignorant School Master (Stanford Uni Press)
• Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (U of Chicago)
• George Sorel, Reflections on Violence (Cambridge Uni Press) [pdf on POLS 3040 Moodle website]
• Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics (MIT)  [pdf on POLS 3040 Moodle website]
• Slavoj Zizek, Violence (Picador)

Kit Articles  (The kit is available at the York Bookstore)

• Immanuel Kant, ‘Ideal for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent’
• Immanuel Kant, ‘Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?’
• Michel Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’
• Immanuel Kant, ‘Selections from Critique of Judgment’
• G.F.W. Hegel, ‘Self-Consciousness’
• Jacques Lacan, ‘The Split Between the Eye and the Gaze’
• Jacques Lacan, ‘Anamorphosis’
• Jacques Lacan, ‘The Line and Light’
• Jacques Lacan, ‘What is a Picture?’
• Judith Butler, ‘Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire
• Michel Foucault, ‘7 January 1976’
• Michel Foucault, ’14 January 1976’
• Georges Bataille, ‘Sacrifice, the Festival and the Principles of the Sacred World’
• George Bataille, ‘Knowledge of Sovereignty’
• George Bataille, ‘The Notion of Expenditure’
• George Bataille, ‘The Meaning of General Economy’
• Herbert Marcuse, ‘Some Social Implications of Modern Technology’
• Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’
• Martin Heidegger, ‘The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking’
• Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of Law’
• Walter Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence’

Web Articles

Karl Marx, ‘Commodities,’ The Fetishism of Commodities’ from Capital Vol. 1, Ch 1, Sections 1, 2 &  4
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume35/index.htm

Assignments and Grade Distribution

Seminar discussion questions
Each person is responsible for producing two discussion questions based on two seminar readings, one each term. These will be selected September 15^th for first term and  January 5^th for second term. Each question should be between four and six lines. The questions are to be:

1. Posted on the course website by Tuesday evening 20:00.
2. Presented in-person for discussion in the seminar portion of the course.

Discussion Forum - Post:

1. Observations/comments/musings (written, images, audio files)  regarding issues relating to the week’s readings.  Each person is expected to do one entry per week. The intent is to get an on-line discussion going that will supplement the seminar portion of the course.
2. Seminar discussion questions.
   

Seminar Discussion
Weekly in-person participation in the seminar hour of the course.

Essays: Concept Papers
Some examples of concepts that could be investigated are subjectivity, emancipation, fetishism, depoliticization, domination, passion, power, violence, gaze, waste, love, decision, friend/enemy, labor, work, sacrifice, time, will, equality, freedom, master-slave, aesthetics, nothingness, truth, etc.

Concept Paper One:
This is a 1500 word, approximately 6 page (250 words per page), essay which pursues a concept that intrigues you derived from the course readings. It would be excellent to select a concept that you wish to pursue throughout the year so that the second paper would also pursue this same concept.  However, this is not a requirement, a completely new concept can be used in the second paper.

In essay 1: the concept needs to be examined in five of the following thirteen readings:

• Butler, ‘Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire’
• Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’
• Hegel, ‘Self-Consciousness’
• Hegel, Introduction to Lectures on Aesthetics
• Kant, ‘Ideal for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent’
• Kant, ‘Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?’
• Kant, ‘Selections from Critique of Judgment’
• Kojeve Introduction to the Reading of Hegel
• Lacan, ‘The Split Between the Eye and the Gaze’
• Lacan, ‘Anamorphosis’
• Lacan, ‘The Line and Light’
• Lacan, ‘What is a Picture?’
• Marx, ‘Commodities,’ ‘The Fetishism of Commodities’ from Capital Vol.1
• Ranciere, The Ignorant School Master

Concept Paper Two:
This is a 4000 word, approximately 16 page (250 words per page), essay which pursues the same concept from the first essay (unless you are bored with this concept) through six new readings. The essay needs to set up the concept from the first essay briefly (no more than two pages or 500 words) and then extend the study into six of the following sixteen readings:

• Bataille, ‘Sacrifice, the Festival and the Principles of the Sacred World’
• Bataille, ‘The Notion of Expenditure’
• Bataille, ‘The Meaning of General Economy’
• Bataille, ‘Knowledge of Sovereignty’
• Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence’
• Derrida, ‘Force of Law’
• Foucault, ‘7 January 1976’
• Foucault, ’14 January 1976’
• Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’
• Heidegger, ‘The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking’
• Marcuse, ‘Some Social Implications of Modern Technology’
• Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
• Schmitt, The Concept of the Political
• Sorel, Reflections on Violence
• Virilio, Speed and Politics
• Zizek, Violence

Films

The two films are visual/auditory/color productions of the concept pursued in the papers.  As such they can be composed of several images and sounds collaged together or a single image /sound/color. What is crucial is that the paper indicates how the film supplements.

For example, a film disclosing the concept of speed could be motionless water, it could be images and sounds of super bikes engaged in a race; it could be motionless water mixed with a soundtrack of super bike acceleration or super bike race images coupled with the sound of almost still water; it could be a mix of all these four options and more.  It is your call regarding how the images, sounds, colors interact with the written essay.

The two films (1 minute and 2 minutes) can be shot on a phone camera, digital still camera, video camera, or computer web cam.  They need to be processed as QuickTime for uploading.

If you are using a pc the Windows Movie Maker 2.1 and 2.6 can be downloaded free from http://download.cnet.com/1770-20_4-0.html?query=Windows+Movie+Maker&searchtype=downloads

And Windows Movie Maker 2.1 can be downloaded free from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx

If you are using an Apple then use iMovie and process as QuickTime Med to HD quality. 

The movies can be uploaded on http://www.youtube.com or http://vimeo.com and the link provided on the Course Discussion Forum.

Reading & Seminar Schedule