Junior Seminar I social Thought and Political Economy 391H

This seminar is the beginning of the year long STEPC Junior Seminar sequence. Junior II focuses on major currents and applications of political, social, and economic theories and the historical circumstances that gave rise to these theories up to the 19^th Century. Through the reading and discussion of key foundational Eurocentric texts and some postcolonial non-Western contemporaries from the 16^th century on, we will be able to recognize the driving forces behind the production of modernity as a Western episteme (the way we organize and learn the world today). We will pay particular attention to the complex ways in which these political, social, and cultural practices and philosophies relate to the contradictions and pitfalls of modernity. We will explore questions of decolonization of social theory and liberation of the political imagination. We will study some of the politico-philosophical-experiential foundations of liberal, radical, and anti-colonial worldviews paying attention to the ways in which ideologies and consciousness are constructed in historical contexts, and then contested through social movements (i.e. colonization vs. French and Haitian Revolutions; the rise of modern-colonial-capitalist-patriarchal systems and various forms of pre-20th century resistance). As this is an interdisciplinary class, we will be bringing in analytic tools from various disciplines—i.e. economy, sociology, anthropology, political science, history, cultural studies, literature—but always paying attention to the historical construction and reception of ideas.

The objectives of this course are to prepare students:

1. 
   To read primary texts while fostering a broad critical understanding of historical grounded texts and their persistence in contemporary case studies;
   
2. 
   To know the main authors, intellectual and cultural lineages, and the relation of theory to historical contexts as both causal and consequential;
   
3. 
   To relate learned abstract concepts to governmental policies, and their reformulations in resistant social actions;
   
4. 
   To develop an awareness of key social theories and movements, and critically identify them in your personal experiences, memories, epistemologies, politics;
   
5. 
   And to incorporate reflection and research on these topics to your independent learning
   

The readings in this course will provide an important background to understand our societies today and will empower students with enough critical tools to break down thought as rooted in historical contexts and their implications in society, hoping to enable students to contest Eurocentric theories while learning (sub) alternative models.

I expect a lot from you and you should expect a lot from yourselves. You will have to come to class having read and prepared questions for discussion directly related to the text. This course is an advanced university course; it requires much reading, but mainly thinking and analysis. Talking about what you think will NOT pass you! The reading of the material is necessary for any real discussion. Critical discussions are necessary for any real significant learning. Each class students must prepare discussion questions and definitions of the major concepts from the reading. In addition, you should include reflections on historical, conceptual, and autobiographical ideas. This journal will serve as a terminology database, and it will help you understand how concepts change with time, and how previous arguments enable the formation of new ones, and it will enrich your reading of any text. If you do not come prepared to class, you will be counted as absent. Otherwise, you will not be able to contribute to class discussion, and our goal is to build a learning community where students work as learners and teachers, where theory is accessible, expandable, and practical for students’ own aspirations for social change and praxis. For this reason, you will have learning partners to share your ideas and writings and peer edit your final work.

All readings and a copy of this syllabus are updated in MOODLE, or else they are to be bought in Food for Thoughts in downtown Amherst. It is very important that you are able to use MOODLE to access required course readings. If you are unsure about how to use MOODLE or are encountering problems, please visit the MOODLE help section on the OIT webpage: (http://www.oit.umass.edu/support/moodle/a-quick-tour-moodle-students).

If you are still unable to use MOODLE please contact me immediately.

Attendance will affect your participation. This is not an online course, and therefore your presence and punctuality are required. I will accept only THREE (3) unexcused absences. Every absence after that will lower your final grade by a third of a letter. Also, every THREE (3) tardies will count as ONE (1) unexcused absence. All excused absences MUST be accompanied by proper documentation (doctor’s note, obituary, athletic department letters, etc).

You will be evaluated in the course based on the quality and care of your written work combined with your attendance and participation. Your grades will not be based on your beliefs or whether you agree with the perspectives presented in class. Below is a general guide of the assignments.

1. 
   What are the major themes and issues discussed in the readings?
   
2. 
   Do you agree with the main arguments presented and why?
   
3. 
   What are the weaker points in the various arguments? What would make them stronger?
   
4. 
   Were you surprised by any of the issues raised by the readings?
   
5. 
   What was the single most interesting thing you read and why?
   
6. 
   What questions came up for you and why?
   

Attendance and Participation 15%, Co-facilitating a class session 5%, reading response papers 5% each, Analytical papers 30% each.

Every student learns in a different way. Non-mainstream ways of learning may be labeled as “disabilities”. If you require any accommodations that can be provided in partnership with Disability Services, and/or if you have a physical, psychological, emotional, or learning disability that makes it difficult for you to participate in class or carry out the work as outlined for this course, please contact me via email during the first two weeks of the course (no later than Tuesday, September 16^th) so we can make appropriate arrangements.

I will not put rigid percentages on the assignments as people have different strengths and weaknesses, and I will measure your performance according to our goals and the learning that takes place in each student. I look forward to learning together and I hope you enjoy the class as much as I will!!!
Required Course Readings

The three books required for the course and are available at Food for Thought Books, 106 N. Pleasant Street, Amherst. You can also find them at the library or via interlibrary loan. They are as follows:

C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (Vintage Press, 2^nd edition)

Francis Wheen, Marx’s Das Kapital: A Biography (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Additional required course readings are available on MOODLE. Please see above section on MOODLE for more information. Readings are subject to change and additional readings may be assigned.
Reading Schedule

W 1

Tuesday 09/04: Introduction: Primitive Accumulation

Karl Marx, “The Secret of Primitive Accumulation” Ch. 26 from Capital Vol. I, (p. 873-876)

Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, “From Eurocentrism to Polycentrism” from Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (p.13-54)

Silvia Federici, “The Accumulation of Labor and the Degradation of Women” from Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (p. 61-132)

Silverblatt, Irene, “The Black Legend and Global Conspiracies: Spain, the Inquisition, and the Emerging Modern World” in Rereading the Black Legend (p. 99-116)

Thomas Hobbes, selections from Leviathan

Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, selections from Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno

Thursday 09/20: Constitutional Government

John Locke, Second Treatise of Government

Ottobah Cugoano, selections from Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery

*Reading Response #1 due*
W 4

Tuesday 09/25: Enlightenment and Democracy

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, selections from The Social Contract

Declaration of Independence/Declaration of the Rights of Man & Citizen

Thursday 09/27: Enlightenment and Slavery

Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” (p. 58-64)

Laurent Dubois, “An enslaved Enlightenment: rethinking the intellectual history of the French Atlantic” (p. 1-14)
W 5

Tuesday 10/02: The Racial Contract

Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract, Ch. 1 (p. 9-40)

Ruth Frankenberg, “The Mirage of an Unmarked Whiteness” from The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness. (p. 72-96)

Thursday 10/04: Marx’s Historical Materialism

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (p. 3-77, this includes Hobsbawm’s intro.)

Karl Marx, “Wage Labour and Capital” (p. 203-217, in Tucker)

Karl Marx, “The Method of Political Economy,” from The Grundrisse (p. 100-108)
W 7

Monday 10/15: Last day to Drop with DR

Tuesday 10/16: Pop Marx

Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (p. 3-6, in ed. Tucker)

Karl Marx, “On Estranged Labor,” from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (p. 70-81, in Marx & Engles Reader, ed. Tucker)

Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach (p. 143-145, in Tucker)

*Reading Response #2 due*
W 8

Tuesday 10/23: The Marxian Critique

Francis Wheen, Marx’s Das Kapital (p. 1-121)

You can buy this book in Food for thought

Thursday 10/25: Discussion on Marx and Modernity

Stuart Hall, “The problem with ideology: Marxism without promises”

Wrap-up Marx.

Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America” (p. 533-580)

Maria Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Modern/Colonial Gender Order” (p. 1-24)

C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins

Book available in Food for Thought

Thursday 11/08: Part 2

C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins

C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins

C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins

Friedrich Nietzsche, selections from, Beyond Good and Evil

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Introduction (p. 1-7)

Eric Hobsbawn, “Age of Empire” from Age of Empire

Thursday 11/29: Imperialism & Conquest

Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, Ch. 1 (p. 7-33)

Dipesh Chakravarti, “Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference” (p. 3-23)

Agustin Lao-Montes, “Reconfigurations of Empire in a World-Hegemonic Transition: The 1898 Spanish-Cuban-American-Filipino War” (p. 209-240)

Chakravarti, Dipesh. Introduction. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. 3-23.

Cugoano, Ottobah. Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery. London: Dawson of Pall Mall, 1969. 10-47.

Dubois, Laurent. “An enslaved Enlightenment: rethinking the intellectual history of the French Atlantic.” In Social History (2006) 31:1, pp. 1-14.

Federici, Silvia. “The Accumulation of Labor and the Degradation of Women.” In Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia, 2004.

Frankenberg, Ruth. “The Mirage of an Unmarked Whiteness.” I n The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness. Chapell Hill: Duke University Press, 2001. 72-96.

Hall, Stuart. “The problem with ideology: Marxism without promises.” In Journal of Communication Inquiry (1986) 10: 28, pp. 28-44.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Selections. 217-242.

Hobsbawm, Eric. The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition. New York and London: Verso, 1998.

---. The Age of Empire. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. 56-83.

James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins. New York: Vintage Press, 1963.

Kant, Immanuel. “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” In The Eighteenth-Century Debate. pp. 58-64.

Lao-Montes, Agustin. “Reconfigurations of Empire in a World-Hegemonic Transition: The 1898 Spanish-Cuban-American-Filipino War.” In Revisiting the Colonial Question in Latin America. Eds. Mabel Moraña and Carlos Jáuregui. Madrid and Frankfurt: Vervuert Iberoamericana, 2008. 209-240

Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government.

Lugones, Maria. “Heterosexualism and the Modern/Colonial Gender Order” (p. 1-24)

Marx, Karl and Engels. The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert C. Tucker. New York and London: Norton and Company, 1978.

McClintock, Ann. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality on the Colonial Contest. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.

Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labor. London: Zed Books, 1986.

Mills, Charles W. The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. 9-40.

Nietzsche, Freidrich. Beyond Good and Evil. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Quijano, Anibal. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America” In Nepantla: Views from the South (2000) 1:3, pp. 533-580.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract.

Silverblatt, Irene. “The Black Legend and Global Conspiracies: Spain, the Inquisition, and the Emerging Modern World.” In Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires. Eds. Greer and Mignolo. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 2008. 99-116.

Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam. “From Eurocentrism to Polycentrism” from Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London and New York: Routledge,1994.

Smith, Andrea. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge: South End Press, 2005.