We will discuss in what sense Nietzsche's work defies traditional categorizations, undermines some long-standing preconceptions, and continues to be profoundly disturbing. In the past three decades a raft of formulations in cultural, social and political theory have addressed the issue of how consent to various forms of domination and subjectification is organized and accomplished, and sometimes undone. Although initially inspired by the English translation of excerpts from Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, thinking on this issue has grown to include contributions from cultural studies, political economy, the sociology of social movements, queer theory, postcolonial studies, and other fields. These will be some of the questions that this course will attempt to address. Our readings will cover selected theoretical material, as well as examples of various cultural productions.
Freedom is the central value of the contemporary age.
Yet there are many, conflicting accounts of the nature of freedom. The seminar is a critical survey of the varieties of freedom today, from the classic modern theories of freedom to recent challenges and alternatives to them, in philosophy, political theory, literature and cultural studies. This course will examine how notions of the aesthetic inform contemporary theories of political identity and democratic politics, and how material conditions make the identities proposed by political theorists possible. Particular attention will be paid to the consumption of leisure and the political dimension of leisure identities. CSPT graduates have gone on to pursue doctoral studies at such universities as York, Hawai'i, Monash, Toronto, Minnesota, Cambridge, Southampton, Denver, Carleton, Santa Cruz, and Johns Hopkins.