ENGL 581

Fall 2018

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Seminar Literary Theory
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Credit: 4 hours.

May be repeated if topics vary. Prerequisite: A college course devoted entirely to criticism or consent of instructor.

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CRN Type Section Time Day Location Instructor Section Details
30196
Lecture-Discussion
A
1:00PM -2:50PM
T
English Building
Basu, A
Part of Term:
1
Date Range:
08/27/18-12/12/18
Section Info:
Sovereignty, Liberal Crisis, and Decisionism The world today is marked by a general anxiety about the political legacy of liberalism. There has been a rise in unflinching nativisms of both blood and soil varieties -- jus sanguinis as well as jus soli. Isolationist fantasies, militant sub-nationalisms, crises of post-colonial nation states, rise of authoritarian populists, and a range of murderous fundamentalisms have posed serious thymotic challenges to the once new world order. These circumstances seem to have called for a rethink the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s famous postulate: that all modern political concepts were transposed theological ones. The modern state, with its artifice of reason can be rendered possible only after what he calls the concept of the ‘political’ has been settled and protected from alien incursions. Schmitt would therefore argue that this India can be a functional liberal democracy only after it is comfortably Hindu in an originary political sense and the United States can ‘return’ to a state of vanilla Rawlsian peace only after the country has been made WASP again. Keeping these questions about sovereignty, religion, self, and contemporary authoritarian temptation in mind, this class intends to visit some key texts in western political philosophy and jurisprudence. We will read excerpts from or entire classic texts like Hobbes (Leviathan), Machiavelli (Discourses), Hegel (Philosophy of Rights), Kant (Selected essays), Locke (on Tolerance), Marx (18th Brumaire, Jewish Question), and Mill (Liberty and Representative Government). We will follow them up with twentieth century authors like Schmitt (Concept of the Political, Political Theology), Arendt (Origins of Totalitarianism), Strauss (Natural Rights and History), Adorno (excerpts from the Authoritarian Personality), Foucault (Society must be Defended) and seminal essays and notes by Walter Benjamin and Antonio Gramsci. Students will be expected to do occasional presentations in class, maintain a journal of observations, and write a 20-30 page term paper on a topic of their choice, preferably related to their research.
Restriction(s):
Restricted to English or Creative Writing major(s). Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.
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