Module description
This module engages with the long-standing and powerful legacy of critical thought in French over the past fifty or so years. Informed by Continental Philosophy, this tradition has articulated a speculative critique of ideologies and cultural hegenomies; it is often counter-intuitive, and inter-disciplinary. The names of figures such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes and a host of others, all of whom have proposed radical transformations of the way we can think about subjectivity, language, power and history, have become common currency in academic disciplines in the arts and humanities and beyond. The work produced in the 'time of theory' (broadly the 1960s and 1970s) by these and other thinkers has had a profound influence on subsequent thinkers, who have developed their ideas and concepts in relation to more recent conjunctures (e.g. Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, Catherine Malabou, Bernard Stiegler, or the collective Tiqqun). The module will involve close attention to selected readings by French or francophone thinkers, often linking more recent work to earlier moments. While the material is not literary, neither is it strictly philosophy, at least in the anglo-american idiom (the module does not require previous study in philosophy); French thought invariably involves an inventive, creative and speculative use of concepts. The ethos of the module will be to consider the ways in which the material proposes a 'new image of thought' (Deleuze) and invites us to rethink our relations to power, to identity, technology, gender, language, and the image. Depending on the year of study the primary reading material will be selected in such a way as to allow a focus on a specific thematic strand in French thought (for example, subjectivity and language, technology, or power) and to afford a narrative development of a kind through the schedule of classes. Reading will normally be in the form of relatively short essays, chapters or extracts. The module will be taught using primary reading material in French and in translation into English, and is thus accessible to students without French language competence.
Assessment details
One 3-hour exam in May/June.
Educational aims & objectives
- To introduce students to some of the broad tendencies in very contemporary French thought against the background of the dominant trends in French thought since the 1960s.
- To enable students to analyse texts of a high degree of theoretical and rhetorical complexity.
- To stimulate critical and speculative thinking about the key themes and preoccupations of recent and contemporary French thought.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this module students will:
- Have a broad grasp of the dominant tendencies in recent French thought.
- Have a profound knowledge of specific examples of recent French thought.
- Have gained the broad contextual knowledge and analytical ability in this subject matter that will equip them for further study and research.
- Be able to relate what they have studied to wider existential and ethical issues beyond academic study.
Teaching pattern
Two hours per week
Suggested reading list
Schedule and Primary Reading
Weeks 1 & 2
Barbara Cassin et al, Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: dictionnaire des intraduisibles (Paris: Seuil, 2004) / Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014) extracts
Week 3
Michel Foucault, ‘Le Panoptisme’ in Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), pp. 197-229/ ‘Panopticism’ in Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage, 1977), pp. 195-230.
Week 4
Gilles Deleuze, ‘Contrôle et devenir’’ & Postscriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle’‘in Pourparlers (Paris: Minuit, 1990), pp. 229-239; 240-247 / , ‘Control and Becoming’ & ‘Postscriptum on Societies of Control’ in Negotiations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 169-76; 177-82.
Week 5
Félix Guattari, ‘De la production de la subjectivité’ in Chaosmose (Paris; Galilée, 1994), pp. 11-52 / ‘On the Production of Subjectivity’ in Chaosmosis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 1-32.
Week 6
Paul Virilio, L’Administration de la peur (Paris: Textuel, 2010) / The Administration of Fear (New York: Semiotext(e)), 2012).
Week 7
Jean Baudrillard, ‘La Précession des simulacres’ in Simulacres et simulation (Paris: Galilée, 1981), pp. 9-68 / ‘The Precession of Simulacra’ in Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), pp. 1-42.
Week 8
Bernard Stiegler, ‘Écran d’écriture’ (https://arsindustrialis.org/l%C3%A9cran-d%C3%A9criture) / ‘The Writing Screen’ in The Neganthropocene (London: Open Humanities Press, 2018), pp. 172-79.
Week 9
Tiqqun, ‘Ceci n’est pas un programme’ (VLC, 2006) / This is not a program (New York; Semiotexte, 2011).
Week 10
Catherine Malabou, Que faire de notre cerveau? (Paris: Bayard, 2004) / What shall we do with our brain? (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008)