POLS438 Politics and Identity
Annotation:
Introduction:
The main question guiding the path of people's live is: Who am I and what am I doing? From the existing, or non-existing, answer depends the path which History will follow. The communities that found a good answer have created states and civilizations. States and civilizations that have lost their abilities to create new answers die.
In the last 25 to 30 years the world has started looking for a new answer to the main question because previous answers have obviously lost their meaning. More and more people and societies are failing to give an answer to the second part of the question and are more focused on the first: Who am I? What is my identity? What is our visage for the others to see?
For the first time the search for an answer is pursued simultaneously in the whole world. It is also followed by the media around the world. At any moment in time, we are able to know the who and where has created a new variation of the answer of identity.
Many political and social thinkers started writing about the questions of identity in the early 90s, and still continue to this day. In this course our goal is to observe the real life processes of the identity dynamics and compare them to the philosophical explanations of the great thinkers.
Lecturers:
Prof. Evgenii Dainov, PhD
Asst. Hristo Panchugov
Course Description:
Competencies:
Skills:
At the end of this course the students will be able to analyze the different identities developed in the contemporary world, and evaluate their creative or destructive potential. This will enable them to better understand their own social interactions and will finally let them construct their own identities.
Prerequisites:
None.
Types:
Full-time Programmes
Types of Courses:
Lecture
Language of teaching:
English
Topics:
- Intro. Modernity and Identity. The politics of identity as a part of the modern struggles for equality. Three waves according to Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth: 1) Struggles for political equality (rights); 2) Struggles for social equality (rights); 3) Struggles for cultural equality (rights) - politics of identity/recognition.
- Universalistic theories of identity: John Rows and Juergen Habermas. The Habermasian pragmatic turn in the Critical Theory. Communicative rationality and deliberative democracy.
- Communitarian critiques to the universalism. What is multiculturalism? Charles Taylor “Politics of recognition”. The policies of positive discrimination and some of their failures.
- Recognition and/or Toleration? The liberal imperative for toleration (John Locke). Different regimes of toleration (Michael Walzer). What’s next and what’s more? The ideal for a due recognition and its utopianism.
- Feminism and LGBTQ. The identity norms as forms of oppression. The subject’s paradox: subjection vs. subjectivization. Judith Butler’s account of oneself.
- National-populist reactions to the politics of identity and difference. What is populism? What are its contemporary forms? Why “multiculturalism” and “LGBTQ” became its first enemies?
- Populist narratives and anti-democratic propaganda in the Bulgarian media. Empirical data from the studies of Human and Social Studies Foundation (HSSF) and new trends.
- The invention of hysteria, mental illness, women, image and power. Photography, image and objectification. Georges Didi-Huberman.
- Forms of power, body, sexuality and control. Michel Foucault.
- Performative speech and identity. John Austin.
- Truth and power. Dimitar Vatsov.
- Performative speech and the appropriation of resistance. Judith Butler.
- The society of spectacle, image and power. Guy Debord.
- Body, politics and representation. Jean-Luc Nancy, Boyan Manchev.
- Summary, discussion, presentation of students’ works.
Bibliography:
(The list that follows is only descriptive and indicative. It does not present literature that will be required for the course.)
Austin, John L., How to Do Things with Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Butler, Judith, Excitible Speech. A Politics of the Performative., Routledge, 1997.
Debord, Guy, La Société du spectacle, folio, 1996.
Didi-Huberman, Georges, Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpêtrière MIT Press, 2004.
Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, Vol I: The Will to Knowledge, Penguin Books, 1998
Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality. Vol II: The Use of Pleasure, Penguin Group(CA), 2006
Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, The History of Sexuality, Vol III: The Care of the Self, Penguin Books, 1990
Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, Vol IV: The Confessions of the Flesh, Pantheon, 2021.
Habermas, Juergen, The Theory of Communicative Action. Vols. 1 and 2. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1984 and 1987.
Honneth, Axel, The Struggle for Recognition (The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts). The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massatchusetts, 1995.
Horkheimer, Max, Critical Theory. Selected Essays. Continuum, New York, 1972.
Manchev, Boyan, Transformance, in Dance. Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Andre Lepecki, Whitechapel Gal, 2012.
Mouffe, Chantal, On a Left Populism, Verso, London and New York, 2018.
Nancy, Jean-Luc, Corpus (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy), Fordham University Press, 2008
Rorty, Richard, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Taylor, Charles, “The Politics of Recognition” in: Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, Gutmann, Amy (ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Vatsov, Dimitar, What Do We Do When We Say “This Is True!”?, Cas Working Paper Series, Sofia, 2017.
Walzer, Michael, On Toleration, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1997.
Assessment:
Practical work 33%
Individual assignement 33%
Participation in the seminar 33%