Revolutions in America
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General
Course Long Title
Revolutions in America
Subject Code
CSOC
Course Number
128
School(s)
Program(s)
CS BFA
Academic Level
UG - Undergraduate
Description
Revolutions in America
Special Topics course for BFA-1 students only.
What is a revolution? Originally related to the cyclical movement of celestial bodies, the notion has now become central to our thinking of bodies down here on earth: that of body-politics. The idea of revolution plays thus ambivalently between the idea of the return to something previous and the breaking away from the
past and the creation of the entirely new. From the French and American revolutions in late eighteenth century to today's both left-and right-wing insurrections and uprisings against established political orders, the revolutionary imagination has been central to our modern and contemporary understanding of politics. This is the central theme we will interrogate with the help of Jewish-German American political thinker Hannah Arendt. We will then narrow down our focus specifically to the United States. In that context, we will criticize the "bicentennial myth" that claims that, in America, there has been only one revolution - the founding one. With the help of constitutional theorist Bruce Ackerman and his notion of "revolutionary reforms," we will see how the United States has experienced a larger number of revolutionary experiences - although not all of them successfully carried out - than the myth allows us to recognize: among them, the Civil War/Reconstructions, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, the so-called Reagan Revolution, and the War on Terror presidency. During the second part of the semester, we will fast-forward into our contemporary times and analyze, with the help of philosopher Judith Butler, the way in which the Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party, and Black Lives Matter movements have reactivated the revolutionary imagination in America and how those movements relate to the politics of cohabitation and that of bodies in the streets. Finally, in dialogue with political theorist William Connolly, we will try to interpret the current aspirational fascism expressed in Trumpism and the current Republican Party. are they today's "revolutionaries"? During the entire semester, we will use the ongoing primaries and the presidential electoral process as an experimental stage to discuss the concepts introduced during the semester. For this reason, we will ask the students to read, together with the assigned bibliography, the Sunday New York Times on a weekly basis.
Special Topics course for BFA-1 students only.
What is a revolution? Originally related to the cyclical movement of celestial bodies, the notion has now become central to our thinking of bodies down here on earth: that of body-politics. The idea of revolution plays thus ambivalently between the idea of the return to something previous and the breaking away from the
past and the creation of the entirely new. From the French and American revolutions in late eighteenth century to today's both left-and right-wing insurrections and uprisings against established political orders, the revolutionary imagination has been central to our modern and contemporary understanding of politics. This is the central theme we will interrogate with the help of Jewish-German American political thinker Hannah Arendt. We will then narrow down our focus specifically to the United States. In that context, we will criticize the "bicentennial myth" that claims that, in America, there has been only one revolution - the founding one. With the help of constitutional theorist Bruce Ackerman and his notion of "revolutionary reforms," we will see how the United States has experienced a larger number of revolutionary experiences - although not all of them successfully carried out - than the myth allows us to recognize: among them, the Civil War/Reconstructions, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, the so-called Reagan Revolution, and the War on Terror presidency. During the second part of the semester, we will fast-forward into our contemporary times and analyze, with the help of philosopher Judith Butler, the way in which the Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party, and Black Lives Matter movements have reactivated the revolutionary imagination in America and how those movements relate to the politics of cohabitation and that of bodies in the streets. Finally, in dialogue with political theorist William Connolly, we will try to interpret the current aspirational fascism expressed in Trumpism and the current Republican Party. are they today's "revolutionaries"? During the entire semester, we will use the ongoing primaries and the presidential electoral process as an experimental stage to discuss the concepts introduced during the semester. For this reason, we will ask the students to read, together with the assigned bibliography, the Sunday New York Times on a weekly basis.