Introduction to Critical Theory Fall 2017

Jan Mieszkowski
M/W 2:40PM-4:00PM

All my reasons interest (speculative as well as practical) is united in the

following three questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? What
may I hope?
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1787)

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point,
however, is to change it.
Karl Marx, Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach (1845)

This class explores post-Kantian conceptions of critique, focusing on the major figures of the
Frankfurt School and some of their contemporaries and inheritors. We will be particularly
concerned with why the analysis of art and literature is crucial for these discourses.

Course Requirements
You will write a midterm paper (68 pages) and a final paper (810 pages).
There will be several in-class pop quizzes, which cannot be made up. You will also be expected
to participate in some Moodle discussions.

Evaluation
Class Participation, Online Discussions, and Quizzes 40%
Essays 60%

The following texts are available in the bookstore and are on reserve in the library:
Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia
Hannah Arendt, The Portable Hannah Arendt
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings
Sigmund Freud, The Freud Reader

Other materials are available on the Moodle, as indicated on the syllabus (M).
 Weekly Reading Schedule

Week 1
8/28 Introduction
Michel Foucault: Las Meninas (M)
8/30 Karl Marx: The Fetishism of Commodities (M)
Jacques Derrida: Excerpt from Specters of Marx (M)

Week 2
9/4 LABOR DAY
9/6 Sigmund Freud: Fetishism (M)
Elizabeth Grosz: Lesbian Fetishism? (M)

Week 3
9/11 Freud: Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (Dora) (Reader 172239)
9/13 Jacqueline Rose: Dora: Fragment of an Analysis (M)
Optional Reading Freud: On Dreams (Reader 142172)

Week 4
9/18 Franz Kafka: The Burrow (M)
Hannah Arendt: Labor, Work, Action, Heidegger the Fox (Portable 167181/543-4)
9/20 Arendt: What is Freedom? (Portable 438461)

Week 5
9/25 Kafka: Investigations of a Dog (M)
Theodor W. Adorno: Notes on Kafka (M)
9/27 Kafka continued

Week 6
10/2 Siegfried Kracauer: Photography, Photographed Berlin, A Note on Portrait Photography (M)
10/4 Walter Benjamin: Little History of Photography (Writings 274298)

Week 7
10/9 Kracauer: The Mass Ornament (M)
Tiller Girls (selected clips)
10/11 Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility (Writings 1955)
Leni Riefenstahl: selections from Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938)

Midterm Paper (68 pages) due Friday, October 13 at 5PM

FALL BREAK
 Week 8
10/23 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: The Culture Industry (M)
10/25 Charlie Chaplin: selections from The Circus (1928)
Benjamin: Chaplin, Chaplin in Retrospect, The Formula in which the Dialectical
Structure of Film Finds Expression (Writings 3337/3401)

Week 9
10/30 Kafka: In the Penal Colony (M)
11/1 Fredric Jameson: The Political Unconscious (M)

Week 10
11/6 Adorno: Minima Moralia
11/8 Minima Moralia continued

Week 11
11/13 Freud: Mourning and Melancholia (Reader 584589)
Wendy Brown: Resisting Left Melancholy (M)
11/15 Judith Butler: Melancholy Gender/Refused Identification (M)

Week 12
11/20 Sara Ahmed: Affective Economies (M)
11/22 Lauren Berlant: Cruel Optimism (M)

Week 13
11/27 Sianne Ngai: The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde (M)
11/29 The Cultural Phenomena of late 2017 (media and works to be determined)

Week 14
12/4 Conclusions

Final Essay (810 pages) due Monday, December 11th at 5PM