Our Syllabus

Critical Theory A: The Point Is To Change It

Fall, 2021, San Francisco Art Institute

Instructor: Dale Carrico, dcarrico@sfai.edu; ndaleca@gmail.com

Course Blog: https://thepointistochangeit.blogspot.com/2021/08/our-syllabus.html
Fridays, 1-3.45pm, MCR, 8/30/21--12/6/19

Rough Basis for Grade: Att/Part, 20%, Reading Notebook, 20%; Midterm Precis/Toulmin Schema, 20%; Final Paper, 5-6pp., 40%

                Course Description:

"The philosophers hitherto have only interpreted the world, but the point is to change it." -- Karl Marx 

"Feminists are no more aware of different things than other people; they are aware of the same things differently. Feminist consciousness, it might be ventured, turns a 'fact' into a 'contradiction.'" -- Sandra Lee Bartky

"Artists inhabit the magical universe." -- William Burroughs

This course is a chronological and thematic survey of key texts in critical and cultural theory. A skirmish in the long rivalry of philosophy and rhetoric yielded a turn in Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud into the post-philosophical discourse of critical theory. In the aftermath of world war, critical theory took a biopolitical turn in Arendt, Fanon, and Foucault -- a turn still reverberating in work on socially legible bodies by writers like Haraway, Lorde, Butler, Stone. And with the rise of the global precariat and climate catastrophe, critical theory is now turning again in STS (science and technology studies) and EJC (environmental justice critique) to articulate the problems and promises of an emerging planetarity. Theories of the fetish define the turn of the three threshold figures of critical theory -- Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud (commodity, sexuality, and ressentimentality) -- and fetishisms ramify thereafter in critical accounts from Benjamin (aura), Adorno (culture industry), Barthes (myth), Debord (spectacle), Klein (logo), and Harvey ("tech") to Mulvey and Mercer (the sexed and raced gaze). We think of facts as found not made, but facts are made to be found and, once found, made to be foundational. Let us pursue the propositions that fetishes are figures we take to yield false facts, while facts are figures we have fetishized to yield paradoxical truths.

                Provisional Schedule of Meetings

                Week One | September 3 | Intro(se)ductions
Maps, Stories, Warnings by Way of Introduction

                Week Two | September 10 | Ancients and Moderns, Fontenelle and Wilde

Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Digression on the Ancients and the Moderns -- Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism               

                Week Three | September 17 | Nietzsche and ressentiment as Fetish

Nietzsche, On Truth and the Lie in an Extramoral Sense -- Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: Preface -- Why I Am So Wise -- Why I Am So Clever -- Why I Am a Destiny

--supplemental Selections from The Gay Science 

                Week Four | September 24 | Marx and the Fetishism of Commodities

Marx on The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof from Capital

-- supplemental Marx and Engels, Theses on Feuerbach and Marx on Idealism and Materialism

                Week Five | October 1 | Freud and Sexual Fetishism
Sigmund Freud, Fetishism -- from Freud's Study of Schreber: 1, Psychoanalysis and Scientificity 2,  Storytelling  3, Psychoanalysis and Patriarchy (Homosociality and Homosexuality) 4. Psychoanalysis Brought to Crisis.

                Week Six | October 8 | Aura and the Culture Industry

Walter Benjamin, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility -- Adorno and Horkheimer, The Culture Industry 

                Week Seven | October 15 | Nature As Fetish; Or, Ideology Is Structured Like A Language

Roland Barthes, Mythologies ; Toulmin Schema Workshop. 

                Week Eight | October 22 | From Being to Having, Having to Appearing, Appearing to Branding

 Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle -- Naomi Klein, Taking On the Brand Bullies from No Logo

                Week Nine | October 29 | Out With The Old, In With The New
William Burroughs, Immortality Screening and discussion of John Carpenter, dir. They Live.

                Week Ten | November 5 | The Eye of Power: Fanon, Mulvey, and Mercer 

Frantz Fanon, Selections from Black Skin, White Masks -- Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema -- Kobena Mercer On Mapplethorpe 
               
                Week Eleven | November 12 | The Carceral Archipelago and Abolition Democracy

Michel Foucault, from Discipline and Punish (this is a .pdf of the entire book from which you should read from the excerpts as far as you like) from "The Body of the Condemned" (pp. 3-31), "Docile Bodies" (pg. 135 +), and "Panoptism" (pg. 195 +) -- Angela Davis, selections from Are Prisons Obsolete? (Chapters 1, 2, 6); Mariame Kaba, Yes, We Mean Literally Defund the Police 

                Week Twelve | November 19 | Intersectional Feminism   

Audre Lorde, Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference  -- The Combahee River Collective Statement -- Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs -- supplemental   Alison Kafer from Feminist, Queer, Crip

                Week Thirteen | November 19 | Thanksgiving Holiday, Workshopping the Final Paper at Home

                Week Fourteen | Queer Theories

Judith Butler, Intro. and Ch. One from Undoing Gender -- Sandy Stone, The Empire Strikes Back  – Sara Ahmed, A Killjoy Manifesto (handout)

                Week Fifteen | November 3 | Environmental Justice

John Bellamy Foster, The Four Lawsof Ecology and the Four Anti-Ecological Laws of Capitalism  -- Aldo Leopold Thinking Like A Mountain (handout) -- Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor – Robert Bullard, Confronting Environmental Racism in the United States  -- Hazel Johnson, A Personal Story

                Course Objectives:

I. Contextualizing Contemporary Critical Theory: The inaugural Platonic repudiation of rhetoric and poetry, Vita Activa/Vita Contemplativa, Marx's last Thesis on Feuerbach, Kantian Critique, the Frankfurt School, Exegetical and Hermeneutic Traditions, Literary and Cultural Theory from the Restoration period through New Criticism, from Philosophy to Post-Philosophy: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud; the postwar biopolitical turn in Arendt, Fanon, and Foucault; and the emerging post-colonial, post-international, post-global planetarity of theory in an epoch of digital networked media formations, anthropogenic climate catastrophe, and polycultural assemblies.

II. Survey of Key Themes in Critical Theory: Abolition Democracy, Agency, Alienation, Assembly, Aura, Capitalism, Cisheteronormativity, Critique, Culture Industry, Discourse, Ecology, Equity-in-Diversity, Facticity, Fetish, Figurality, Humanism/Post-Humanism, Ideology, Intersectionality, Judgment, Normativity, Patriarchy, Performance, Planetarity, Post-Colonialism, Precarity, Queerness, Race, Recognition, Resistance, Scientificity, Sociality, Spectacle, Textuality, Violence, White Supremacy.

III. Survey of Key Critical Methodologies: Critique of Ideology, Marxism/Post-Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Foucauldian Discourse Analysis, Critical Race Theory, Gender Theory, Science and Technology Studies, Environmental Justice.

IV. Connecting theoria and poiesis: thinking and acting, theory and practice, creative expressivity as aesthetic judgment and critical theory as poetic refiguration, etc.

We at SFAI believe that art-making and learning are community endeavors.  For this reason, class attendance is a crucial component of your education.  Being present and accountable to one another are the first steps in engaging your community, improving your work, and becoming artists and scholars. Therefore, attendance is mandatory for all classes.  Review each syllabus for specific course policies. Students who are unable to attend class due to illness, injury, or other compelling reasons must contact their instructor immediately.

Grades will be determined by the following numerical breakdown:          97-100: A+           93-96: A               

90-92: A-               87-89: B+              83-86: B                80-82: B-               77-79: C+              73-76: C                               

70-72: C-               67-69: D+              63-66 D                 60-62: D-               Below 60: NP 

ACADEMIC RESOURCE CENTER

The Academic Resource Center (ARC) provides free academic support to all SFAI students on any assignment or project. Because everyone benefits from discussing and developing their work in an individualized setting, SFAI recommends that all students make use of the ARC. Students are also welcome to drop by the ARC to study or meet with a group; the space has desks, computers, a printer, course textbooks, and other reference material. The ARC also holds workshops on writing techniques and study skills throughout the semester. The ARC is located in the Anne Bremer Memorial Library on the Chestnut Street campus. Students can make an appointment with a tutor by dropping in during our regular hours or by emailing arc@sfai.edu.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATIONS

SFAI has a commitment to provide equal educational opportunities for qualified students with disabilities in accordance with state and federal laws and regulations; to provide equality of access for qualified students with disabilities; and to provide accommodations, auxiliary aids, and services that will specifically address those functional limitations of the disability which adversely affects equal educational opportunity. SFAI will assist qualified students with disabilities in securing such appropriate accommodations, auxiliary aids and services. The Accessibility Services Office at SFAI aims to promote self-awareness, self-determination, and self-advocacy for students through our policies and procedures. In the case of any complaint related to disability matters, a student may access the student grievance procedures; however, complaints regarding requests for accommodation are resolved pursuant to Section IV – Process for Requests for Accommodations: Eligibility, Determination and Appeal. The Accessibility Services Office can be reached at accessiblity@sfai.edu.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY AND MISCONDUCT POLICY

The rights and responsibilities that accompany academic freedom are at the heart of the intellectual, artistic, and personal integrity of SFAI. At SFAI we value all aspects of the creative process, freedom of expression, risk-taking, and experimentation that adhere to the fundamental value of honesty in the making of one’s academic and studio work and in relationship to others and their work. Misunderstanding of the appropriate academic conduct will not be accepted as an excuse for academic dishonesty. If a student is unclear about appropriate academic conduct in relationship to a particular situation, assignment, or requirement, the student should consult with the instructor of the course, Department Chair, Program Directors, or the Dean of Students. 

FORMS OF ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT:

Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of another’s words, ideas, or information. At SFAI academic writing must follow conventions of documentation and citation (6.1; MLA Handbook, Joseph Gibaldi ch.2). Students are advised to seek out this guideline in the Academic Support Center, to ask faculty when they are in doubt about standards, and to recognize they are ultimately responsible for proper citation. In the studio, appropriation, subversion, and other means of challenging convention complicate attempts to codify forms of acknowledgment and are often defined by disciplinary histories and practices and are best examined, with the faculty, in relationship to the specific studio course.

Cheating is the use or attempted use of unauthorized information including: looking at or using information from another person’s paper/exam; buying or selling quizzes, exams, or papers; possessing, referring to, or employing opened textbooks, notes, or other devices during a quiz or exam. It is the responsibility of all students to consult with their faculty, in a timely fashion, concerning what types of study aids and materials are permissible in their specific course.

Falsification and Fabrication are the use of identical or substantially the same assignment to fulfill the requirements for two or more courses without the approval of the faculty involved, or the use of identical or substantially the same assignment from a previously completed course to fulfill requirements for another course without the approval of the instructor of the later course. Students are expected to create new work in specific response to each assignment, unless expressly authorized by their faculty to do otherwise.

Unfair Academic Advantage is interference—including theft, concealment, defacement or destruction of other students’ works, resources, or material—for the purpose of gaining an academic advantage.

Noncompliance with Course Rules is the violation of specific course rules as outlined in the syllabus by the faculty or otherwise provided to the student.