GOVT 3646

The History of the Present

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2014-2015.

According to the philosopher Michel Foucault, we cannot understand what is going on "today" without undertaking a historical excavation of how the current universe of thought, discourse, and culture came about. This course seeks to put into practice Foucault's incentive to construct a "history of the present" by exploring some of the most important ideas that have shaped our present. Among other topics we will discuss authoritarianism, liberalism, constitutionalism, republicanism, Marxism, conservatism, fascism, terrorism, neoliberalism, colonialism, modernism, racism, human rights, feminism, and third-worldism. We will examine how these systems of thought originated, how they came to operate as mechanisms of power and knowledge, and how they presented certain categories and claims as natural, self-evident, or inevitable. Readings will include Hobbes, Rousseau, Madison, Burke, Tocqueville, Robespierre, Arendt, Marx, Hayek, Fanon, Beauvoir, Wittig, and Althusser. Lectures will be organized around the contextualization and the close readings of texts.

When Offered Fall.

Distribution Category (HA-AS)

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