A broad consideration of the historical relationship between philosophy, literature, and rhetoric, with special emphasis on selected themes within the early modern and modern periods.

The world is in trouble. From the intensification of extreme economic inequalities and forms of racist exclusion to the climate catastrophe and the collapse of justice horizons, many populations are now facing further devastation and destruction, and others are beginning to share in that experience. It is said that this juncture is not temporary but a structuring condition. And as we attempt to make sense of this world, meaning itself appears to be in crisis. With what critical tools do we understand and engage the world at this juncture? How do we examine it and analyze the rhetorics around its myriad processes and events? Do we limit ourselves to the description of the events, or do we deploy theoretical tools that could help us receive and understand this world more critically? A sense of trouble (in language and meaning, but also in politics, the economy, the psyche, and the earth) is constitutive of so much modern rhetorical theory. Therefore, this course approaches it as a resource for thinking through this moment. To this end, the course surveys key theoretical texts from the late nineteenth into the early twenty-first century, which shed light on how meaning is produced and interrogated in modernity. One of the key accomplishments of the modern era is the development of critical stances that question the appearance, objectivity, and naturalness of texts and acts. These stances also reveal the power operations of texts and things. We examine the making of these stances: how they came to be, their attention to power, and their intellectual and political consequences. What are the modes of thinking, reading, and interpretation that have been consequently introduced? How have they changed, and what of them remains available to us today? We begin with Marx’s critique of ideology and end with the approaches that question the divisions between the human, natural, and technological. Other theorists will help us grasp the relationship between discourse and power, the powers of slavery and colonialism, bodies and their extensions, the psyche as an archive, the workings of technology, and questions of resistance and struggle.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills