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French Thought After May 68

HISTORY 2331 Professor Camille Robcis

GOVT 2626 / COML 2331 Office: McGraw Hall 364Spring 2009 Phone: 607-255-5724T & R 2:55 4:10 Email: car27@cornell.eduRoom: : Rockefeller B16 Office Hours: T & R 1 - 2

Course Description:

The expression May 68 is often used as a synonym for what has come to be known as FrenchTheory, encompassing the works of authors such as Derrida, Barthes, Foucault, Deleuze,

Althusser, and Lacan, and generating new conceptual models to rethink power relations, gender,language, and subjectivity more generally. Less well-known perhaps, is the reaction on the part ofmany French intellectuals against this current of French Theory and its philosophical, social, andpolitical implications. In this seminar, we will begin by reading some of the foundational texts thatemerged out of the events of May 68, before turning to authors such as Lefort, Clastres, Gauchet,Furet, and Rosanvallon, who have all written about the limitations of thepense 68.

Course Requirements:

Students are expected to attend every class, do all the reading, and participate actively duringdiscussion. Please come to class with specific questions and passages you would like to discuss.

In addition, there will be three 5-7 page essays. Topics and guidelines for these papers will behanded out in class. Due dates are: Feb. 23, Mar. 30, and Apr.30. Papers are to be left in mymailbox at McGraw Hall, fourth floor, by noonon the due date.

There will be no extensions and late papers will be marked accordingly.

Please make sure to cite all sources carefully in your papers. Refer to the Code of AcademicIntegrity or further information (http://cuinfo.cornell.edu/Academic/AIC.html). Any violation ofthe Code of Academic Integrity will be forwarded to the Office of Student Conduct and will resultin a failing grade for the course.

The grade breakdown is as follows:Class Attendance + Participation: 25% ; Papers: 25% each.

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Required Books:

Available for purchase at the Cornell Bookstore, or on reserve at Uris Library. Please note that youcan also find many of these books used (on Amazon Marketplace, for example). All other texts areavailable online through the Blackboard course site. Please make sure that you come to class with a

printed version of these texts so that we can refer to specific passages.

Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy(Touchstone, 1997)Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,Anti-Oedipus(University of Minnesota Press, 1983)Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998)Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish(Vintage, 1995)Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1(Vintage, 1990)Marcel Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World(Princeton University Press, 1999)Kristin Ross,May 68 and Its Afterlives(University of Chicago Press, 2004)

Suggested Reference Books for Critical Theory:

The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism, ed. by Joseph Childers and GaryHentzi (Columbia UP, 1995).

Dylan Evans,An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis(Routledge, 1996)John Lechte, Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers(Routledge, 2007)David Macey, The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory(Penguin, 2002)

Course Outline:

Tue. 01/20 Introduction

The Background: Structuralism

Thu. 01/22 Claude Lvi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship(Part I)

Tue. 01/27 Claude Lvi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship(Part II)

Thu. 01/29 Jacques Lacan, The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis(focus on Part II of the essay, pp.56 to 76)

Louis Althusser

Tue. 02/03 Lenin and Philosophy: Philosophy as a Revolutionary Weapon and Ideology andIdeological States Apparatus

Thu. 02/05 Lenin and Philosophy: Freud and Lacan and Preface to Capital Volume One

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Jacques Derrida

Tue. 02/10 Of Grammatology, Part I, Chapters 1 and 2 (pp.1-73)

Thu. 02/12 Of Grammatology, Part II, Chapters 1 and 2 (pp.97-164)

Michel Foucault

Tue. 02/17 Discipline and Punish, Parts 1 and 2

Thu. 02/19 Discipline and Punish, Part 3

PAPER I DUE ON 02/23

Tue. 02/24 The History of Sexuality, Volume I, parts 1 to 3

Thu. 02/26 The History of Sexuality, Volume I, parts 4 and 5

Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari

Tue. 03/03 Anti-Oedipus(excerpts)

Thu. 03/05 No Class

Tue. 03/10 Anti-Oedipus(excerpts)

Feminisms

Thu. 03/12 Movie:A Question of Silence (we will watch it in class)

SPRING BREAK

Tue. 03/24 Monique Wittig, excerpts from The Straight Mind

Thu. 03/26 Luce Irigaray, Questions in This Sex Which Is Not One

PAPER II DUE ON 03/30

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The Legitimacy of the Liberal Age

Tue. 03/31 New French Thought (Introduction by Mark Lilla + excerpts)

Thu. 04/02 New French Thought(excerpts)

The Problem of the State

Tue. 04/07 Pierre Clastres, Society Against the StateSamuel Moyn, Of Savagery and Civil Society

Thu. 04/09 Blandine Kriegel, The State and the Rule of Law(pp.1-50)

The Problem of Religion

Tue. 04/14 Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World, Part I

Thu. 04/16 Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World, Part II

The Return of the Political

Tue. 04/21 Franois Furet, The French Revolution is Over

Thu. 04/23 Pierre Rosanvallon, Inaugural Lecture at the Collge de FranceClaude Lefort, Politics and Human Rights

May 68 and Its Afterlives

Tue. 04/28 Kristin Ross,May 68 and Its Afterlives(excerpts)

Thu. 04/30 Conclusions

PAPER III DUE ON 04/30