Brooklyn College
Department of Political Science
Contemporary Political Theory 53
Spring 2002

This course surveys political thought from the late nineteenth century to the present, examining what we will call 'the disenchantment thesis and its consequences' in terms of morality, reason, culture, political solidarity, and democratic politics. From the Enlightenment and the French and American Revolutions had sprung up a general enthusiasm, against the dogma of religious authority tied to the Absolute rule of Kings, and for a democratic politics under the rule of law and reason. The twentieth century however is marked by two world wars, the devastation of the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin's Gulags, and the threat of nuclear war, all in the context of a capitalism which has drawn the world closer and escalated the dangers of violence.

Why hasn't the rule of Reason and Law produced a better world? What kind of politics can best frame hope for the future?

TEXTS

Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment
Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember
Foucault, History of Sexuality, volume 1
Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
A photocopy Reader.

READING SCHEDULE

I. Truth, Morality, The Disenchantment Thesis, Identification, and Violence

1. 1873 Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Truth & Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense"
2. 1887 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, books 1 & 2
3. 1919 Max Weber, "Science as a Vocation"
4. 1921 Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
5. 1921 Walter Benjamin, "Critique of Violence"

II. Aura, Reason, Technology & Sex
1. 1936 Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
2. 1944 Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment
3. 1968 Jürgen Habermas, "Technology & Science as 'Ideology'"
4. 1976 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, volume 1

III. Nationalism
1. 1983 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
2. 1989 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember
3. 1993 Slavoj Zizek, "Enjoy Your Nation as Yourself!"

IV. Liberal thought and the Public Sphere
1. 1958 Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty"
2. 1996 Jürgen Habermas, "Three Normative Models of Democracy"
3. 1995 Charles Taylor, "Liberal Politics and the Public Sphere"
4. 1997 Nancy Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere"
5. 1996 Iris Young, "Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy"
6. 1996 Joan Tronto, "Care as a Political Concept"
7. 2000 William Connolly, "The Liberal Image of the Nation"

V. Enchantment, Once again?
1. 1969 Theodor Adorno, "Free Time"
2. 1974 Michel de Certeau, "Believing and Making People Believe," & "The Unnamable"
3. 2001 Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life

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