Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

A study of the counter-traditions within western civilization. Compares and contrasts diverse traditions within western culture that critique its central value systems. It will focus on the attempts of great artists and thinkers to break with tradition, and the subsequent creation of new ideas and forms of experience and expression. Writing/Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

The Affective Politics of Hate

In the current political climate, the display of unbridled emotions in speech or action with regard to politics, identity, and freedom seems not only to have taken centre stage but also to have become the dominant mode of representing the present. Amongst displays of fear, pain, and anxiety it is hate that is perhaps the most visible and identifiable phenomenon. But from where does hate come? Why does it become particularly visible when questions of politics, identity, and freedom are at stake? Is hate truly legible in transparent ways? Does it belong to the field of affect or political maneuvering? How is hate implicated in entwined histories of violence, oppression, and power? Most importantly, can hate be mobilized against itself?

In this course we will discuss these questions by examining the effects of different social discourses that have either originated or have become unwilling vectors of social hate. Much of our discussions will revolve on questions of race/racialization/racism (even in texts in which race might not be apparent), which have sparked in the last decades fierce debates as well as violent action, but also fierce resistance and the creation of new collectivities of struggle (e.g., #blacklivesmatter or Idle No More).

Taking the cue from Angela Davis’s Freedom is a Constant Struggle : Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, we will consider the historical and mutually constitutive relation of violence, global capital, and the political order (starting with the system of slavery) in the formation of stratified societies where the threat of economic disposability lurks large, and in which hate becomes both display of social disaggregation and weapon of social control. But we will also pay close attention to the way in which individuals are implicated in such strategies even when they are seemingly distanced or disconnected from strategies of disaggregation. Our analysis, therefore, will focus simultaneously on the singularity of individuals, social groups, and collectivities attempting to produce change.

Reading material will comprise novels, critical thought, and theory.

TEACHING MODE: Synchronous lecture – recorded.

This seminar requires a weekly two-hour and a half contact “in class” for lecture and discussion. The remaining hours will be used by students for self-study and assignments on Canvas. The reduced contact hours are meant to lessen the impact of ‘Zoom fatigue’. We will also have breaks for coffee or just to rest eyes and ears. We will all work to build a vibrant online community to make the best of the current circumstances.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

At the end of the course, students will be able to demonstrate their proficiency in the following activities:

1. Read and analyze Humanities Texts creatively and to academic standards by using an interdisciplinary approach.
2. Gain an understanding of the affective politics and performativity of emotions.
3. Gain an understanding of the historical development of contemporary phenomena of hate in relation to other affects such as fear, pain, anxiety, and love.
4. Gain an understanding of the entwinement of race with the nexus of violence, global capital, and political order.
5. Develop research skills to be connected to projects for public education.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: