This class examines important thinkers writing in French from the 1960’s to the present. Readings cover seminal texts from Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Latour, Deleuze, Irigaray, and Ranciere. However, special attention will be given to the three giants of French thought: Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze. Topics to be covered include the social impact of technological developments, reality and virtuality, social repression, freedom, the nature of desire, language and commmunication, sexual difference, modern democracy, and revolutionary politics. After the failed 1968 student uprising, French philosophers set about to explain why Marxist revolution never came to pass. This not only led them to examine new forms of social control that, they claimed, impeded social progress; it led them to question whether previous philosophical thought, including the most prevalent philosophical methods of the day (Hegelianism, structuralism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism itself) were complicit in perpetuating social ills. This class examines the ideas and philosophical methods French thinkers developed in response: post-structuralism, deconstruction, and archeology. We will see that, different as they are, all these thinkers are rightly subsumed under the heading of “postmodern philosophers” in that they all share a common distrust of totalizing thought, especially in its recurrent attempts to delegitimize, marginalize, or exclude what cannot be fit into neat philosophical categories. Most importantly though, these philosophers all share a fervent desire to break out of established ways of thinking and acting—impossible though this may seem. Indeed, their philosophical task has been justly called “thinking the impossible.”

1.) Students will gain a basic familiarity with and be able to define key concepts developed by French thinkers (see list of terms below). Students will explain why these thinkers were obliged to invent new terms and concepts to express themselves and what they hoped to draw attention to, clarify, or problematize through their choice of words. 2.) Students will be able to identify and explain the dominant philosophical ideas and methods to which French thinkers responded. Students will explain why these thinkers believe their philosophical predescessors’ ideas are either (1.) outdated, (2.) contradictory, (3.) self-undermining, or (4.) insufficient for practical purposes—as the case may be. 3.) Students will be able to explain and evaluate different conceptions of the “postmodern” and explain why the current era has been called the “postmodern age.”

Required Texts PDFs of required texts will be provided to students either digitally or in the form of a printed collection—or “reader.” However, for those who wish to consult the original texts from which readings are drawn, I have listed the texts below. Primary Texts Used in Class AGAMBEN Giorgio (1995), Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press. FOUCAULT Michel (1995), Discipline and Punish. Translated by Alain Sheridan. New York, N.Y.: Vintage. LATOUR Bruno (1994), “Where are The Missing Masses.” In Wiebe Bijker and John Law, eds. Shaping Technology / Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, M.A.: MIT Press. BAUDRILLARD Jean (1994), Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor, Michicagn: University of Michigan Press. DE SAUSSURE Ferdinand (2011), Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Wade Baskin. New York, N.Y: University of Columbia Press. DERRIDA Jacques (1982), Margins of Philosophy. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago, I.L.: University of Chicago Press. DERRIDA Jacques (2013), Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins university Press. LACAN Jacques (2006), “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis,” In Ecrits. W.W. Norton & Company, 30-113. LACAN Jacques (2006), “The Signification of the Phallus,” In Ecrits. W.W. Norton & Company, 575-584. DELEUZE Gilles and Felix Guattari (1972). Anti-Oedipus. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. IRIGARAY Luce (1985), “Psychoanalysis: Another Look,” in This Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 34-66. AGAMBEN Giorgio (1998), Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by D. Heller Roazen. Stanford, C.A.: Stanford University Press. RANCIERE Jacques (2013), The Politics of Aesthetics, London, U.K.: Bloomsbury Academic. RANCIERE Jacques (1999), Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Mineapolis, M.N.: University of Minnesota Press. General Introductions for Further Reading BEST Steven and Kellner Douglas (1991), Postmodern Theory. New York, N.Y.: Guilford Press. – A good general introduction to Foucualt, Deleuze, Baudrillard and others, with a focus on their contributions to “postmodern theory.” DESCOMBES Vincent (1980), Modern French Philosophy – Covers a great deal of intellectual history, most notably the influence of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche on Foucualt, Derrida and Delueze. FINK Bruce (1995), The Lacanian Subject Between Language and Juissance. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Universtiy Press. – An excellent introduction to Lacan, with a focus on the subject. GUTTING Gary (2011), Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. – Mainly surveys French philosophy’s intellectual origins, and attempts to understand major thinkers through their varying reactions’ to Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, and Nietzsche. LEAR Jonathan (2015), Freud. London: Routledge. – Classic introduction to Freud that covers his ideas thematically; includes helpful references for further reading. ROBCIS Camille (2021), Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France. Chicago, I.L.: Chicago University Press. – Fascinating new historical study that examines French philosphy’s emergence from the radical psychiatry movement, with a focus on Foucualt, Deleuze, and Fanon.