Debates in Contemporary Philosophy and Critical Theory

The School of Humanties (Pavilion Parade) at the University of Brighton Faculty of Arts welcomes all those interested in lectures and debate on contemporary philosophy and critical theory.

Lecture Series, Term 2, 2010
Tuesday afternoons 17.00-18.30
Room 204, Pavilion Parade
[entrance in Pavilion Street, off Grand Parade]
 
Participants in the lecture series should read at least one of the primary sources listed for each week. These recommendations are a small selection from the material available in the library. There is also plenty of material available on the web. The lectures introduce key ideas, but those students pursuing the MA Programme in Cultural and Critical Theory will explore these in more detail in their seminar presentations and discussions.
 
Week 1 : 5th of January
From Adorno’s Negative Dialectic to Habermas’s Deliberative Democracy (Mark Devenney)
 
Adorno, T Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. Trans. E.F.N. Jephcott. London: Verso, 1974.
Adorno, T Negative Dialectics. Trans. E.B. Ashton. New York: Seabury Press, 1973.
Habermas, J. ‘Modernity: An Incomplete Project’ in Postmodern Culture, (ed. Hal Foster), London, Pluto, 1987.
Habermas, J. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 1987, Ch. 11 and 12.
 
Week 2: 12th of January
Althusser and Gramsci: The Politics of Over-determination and Hegemony: Rethinking Marx (Mark Devenney)
 
Antonio Gramsci, ‘The Revolution against Capital’, in Selections from Political Writings (1910-1920), Lawrence and Wishart, London 1977, pp. 34-7.
Althusser, L., For Marx, Verso, London and New York, 1990, chs 3,4,5 & 7.
 
Week 3: 19th of January
Second Wave Feminisms (Gill Scott)

Firestone, S. The Dialectic of Sex, 1970, Women’s Press, 1979.
Mitchell, J. Woman’s Estate, Harmondsworth, 197.1
 
Week 4: 26th of January
Structuralism and Semiotics (Mark Devenney)
 
De Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. Ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. Trans. Roy Harris. London: Duckworth, 1983. Introduction (excluding appendix on phonology) and Parts 1 and 2.
Barthes, Roland. ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative’. Image, Music, Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. London: Fontana, 1977. 79-124.
 
Week 5: 2nd of February
Deconstruction: The limits of unlimited semiosis  (Mark Devenney)

Derrida, Jacques. ‘Signature Event Context’. Trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman. Limited Inc. Ed. Gerald Graff. Evanston, IL.: Northwestern University Press, 1988. 1-23.
Derrida, Jacques ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’. Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. London: Routledge, 1978. 278-93.
 
 
Week 6: 9th of February, Reading Week
 
Week 7: 16th of February
Foucault: Power, knowledge and rationality (Mark Devenney)
 
Foucault, M ‘Truth and Power’ in Power, London, Penguin, 1994, pp. 111-133.
Foucault, M ‘Governmentality’ in Power, London, Penguin, 1994, pp. 201-222.
 
Week 8: 23rd of February
Post-structuralist Feminisms: Butler and Cixous on the Politics of Gender (Mark Devenney)
 
Butler, Judith,   Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London, Routledge, 1990, (selections). and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’, London, Routledge, 1994, (selections).
Le Doeuff, Michelle, ‘Long Hair, Short Ideas’ in The Philosophical Imaginary, London, The Athlone Press, 1989, pp. 100-129.
 
Week 9: 2nd of March
Giorgio Agamben on Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Mark Devenney)
 
Agamben, Giorgio  Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press, pp. 1-29 and 119-145.
 
Week 10: 9th of March
Zizek: Rethinking ‘Truth’ after Postmodernism (Mark Devenney)
 
Zizek, S ‘The Obscene Knot of Ideology and How to Untie It’ in The Parallax View, London, MIT Press, 2005, pp. 330-387.
 
Week 11: 16th of March
Laclau and Ranciere: Reconceptualising the Political (Mark Devenney)
 
Laclau, Ernesto ‘Concluding Reflections’ in On Populist Reason, London, Verso, 2005, pp. 223-250.
Ranciere, Jacques  ‘Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?’ (http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/001879.php)
Ranciere, Jacques Disagreement, Minnesota University Press, pp. 95-140.
 
 
Week 12: 23rd of March
Badiou: Love, Art, Science and Politics: The Truth Conditions of Philosophy (Mark Devenney)
 
Badiou, A ‘Preface’ to Logics of Worlds, London, Continuum, 2009, pp. 1-40.
Badiou, Alain ‘Against Political Philosophy’ and ‘Politics as Truth Procedure’ both in Metapolitics, London, Routledge, 2005.