Introduction to Critical Theory

Jan Mieszkowski
T/Th 1:10PM-2:30PM
Eliot 314

All my reasons interest (speculative as well as practical) is united in the following three questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1787)

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
Karl Marx, Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach (1845)

This class explores post-Kantian conceptions of critique, focusing on a number of the major figures of the Frankfurt School. We will ask what it means to understand theory as a force that can produce new social forms. We will also consider the crucial role that analyses of art and literature play in left-wing discourse.

After an introductory unit on the relationship between theoretical inquiry and reading, we will examine three attempts to explain what is at stake aesthetically and politically in interpreting the work of Franz Kafka. We will then turn to debates about the representational and ideological dynamics of twentieth-century mass culture. In the final section of the course, we will explore the new understandings of historical experience that emerge in the wake of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Course Requirements

There will be two short papers (5-6 pages) and a take-home final. There will be a number of in-class pop quizzes, which cannot be made up.

Evaluation

Class participation & Quizzes	30%
Essays	50%
Final Exam	20%

The following texts are available in the bookstore:

Samuel Beckett, Endgame and Act Without Words
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological
Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan (trans. John Felstiner)
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment
Franz Kafka, The Complete Short Stories
The Marx-Engels Reader (ed. Robert Tucker)
A Heiner Mller Reader: Plays, Poetry, Prose.

These following essays/excerpts are available as library e-reserves:

Theodor W. Adorno, The Meaning of Working Through the Past
Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life
Theodor W. Adorno, Notes on Kafka
Theodor W. Adorno, Trying to Understand Endgame
Louis Althusser & tienne Balibar, Reading Capital
Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death
G. W. F. Hegel, Lordship and Bondage
Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament
Siegfried Kracauer, Franz Kafka.

We will being screening parts or all of:

The Circus (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1928)
The Manchurian Candidate (dir. John Frankenheimer, 1962)
Mickey Mouse (early cartoons 1928-1935)
North by Northwest (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
Shoah (dir. Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
Triumph of the Will (dir. Leni Riefenstahl, 1935).

Reading Schedule

Part I: What is Theory?

Week 1

1/27 Introduction / Hegel: Lordship and Bondage (e-reserves)

1/29 Horkheimer & Adorno: The Concept of Enlightenment

Week 2

2/3 Marx: The German Ideology (Marx-Engels Reader 147-160)
Althusser: Reading Capital 13-30 (e-reserves)

2/5 Marx: Grundrisse, Capital (Marx-Engels Reader 222-243,294-302)
Althusser: Reading Capital 31-49

Part II: The Critique of Humanism

Week 3

2/10 Kafka: A Report to an Academy, The Knock at the Manor Gate
Benjamin: Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death (e-reserves)

2/12 Kafka: Investigations of a Dog
Adorno: Notes on Kafka (e-reserves)

Week 4

2/17 Kafka: The Burrow
Kracauer: Franz Kafka (e-reserves)

2/19 Kafka: Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk

First Essay due Friday, February 20 at 5PM

Part III: The Mass Culture Debate

Week 5

2/24 Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility

2/26 Chaplin: The Circus
Benjamin: Chaplin, Chaplin in Retrospect, The Formula in which the Dialectical Structure of Film Finds Expression

Week 6

3/3 Disney: Mickey Mouse
Benjamin: Mickey Mouse
Eisenstein: selected writings on Disney (handout)

3/5 Kracauer: The Mass Ornament (e-reserves)
Tiller Girls/Riefenstahl (selected clips)

Week 7

3/10 Adorno & Horkheimer: The Culture Industry
Hitchcock: North by Northwest

3/12 North by Northwest continued

Spring Break

Week 8

3/24 Frankenheimer: The Manchurian Candidate

3/26 The Manchurian Candidate continued

Second Essay due Friday, March 27 at 5PM

Part IV: The Ends of History, The End of the World

Week 9

3/31 Freud: Civilization and its Discontents

4/2 Civilization and its Discontents continued
Adorno: Minima Moralia (e-reserves)

Week 10

4/7 Beckett: Endgame and Act Without Words

4/9 Adorno: Trying to Understand Endgame (e-reserves)

Week 11

4/14 Celan: selected poems

4/16 Celan continued

Week 12

4/21 Lanzmann: Shoah (selections)
Adorno: The Meaning of Working Through the Past (e-reserves)

4/23 Shoah continued

Part V: Conclusions

Week 13

4/28 Heiner Mller (selected poems & prose)

4/30 Heiner Mller continued

Final Exam due Monday, May 11 at 5PM