Module description
This module is the first of two compulsory 15-credit modules for the MA in Critical Theory, and for students on that MA it serves, among other things, as background and preparation for the second-semester compulsory module for the Critical Theory MA, 'Main Currents in Critical Theory', which focuses on the linked thematics of 'Biopolitics and Sovereignty' and 'Subjectivity, Desire and the Body’. The module is also designed to work autonomously, and, subject to the availability of spaces, it may also be taken as an optional module by students on other MA programmes in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
Our aim with this module is to provide students with an in-depth understanding of a selection of landmark texts in the interdisciplinary field of critical theory. The list of reading will sometimes change from year to year, but typically explores discourses in continental philosophy, Marxist political thought, psychoanalytic theory, structuralist literary analysis, and deconstruction, and critical thinking on technology, theories of gender and sexuality and postcolonial theory, among other issues, which have shaped many of the disciplines in the humanities, and their epistemological and methodological directions in the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond. It aims to familiarise students with some of the philosophical premises that underpin such discourses in critical theory, situating critical theory in relation to its antecedents and bringing out its potential for the future. In these ways we aim to provide students with the tools appropriate to the understanding, interpretation and deployment of discourses in critical theory and with a firm basis for the use of frameworks in critical theory for further study and research across a range of disciplines in the humanities.
The primary material steps back from the contemporary ferment of theoretical references to comprise a series of relatively short, yet dense and provocative, paradigm-shifting readings. The texts, mainly by 20th-century writers, continue to be referenced in contemporary theoretical discourse and debate. The focus of seminars will be close reading of the primary material and discussion of the key ideas and concepts. Following an introductory session which will explore the use-value of critical theory for critical thinking about the contemporary world, the primary material may be viewed as embodying both a ‘horizontal', narrative progression from Ur-texts such as those by Freud and Marx, through to more recent, yet still canonical explorations, and, on the other hand, a 'vertical' recurrence of themes such as commodity fetishism, spectrality, excess, gender, sexuality, technology, textuality, structurality, and play. Seminar discussions and assessment questions will relate both to the specificities of each text, and to the overarching themes embodied by the primary reading.