HISTORY
§1. Introduction
Required
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Introduction and Chapter 1).
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (Chapter XIX: “Of the Dissolution of Government”)
Optional
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution
Raymond Williams, “Revolution” in Keywords
§2. Words and Things
Required
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Chapters 2-3)
Condorcet, “On Revolution: On the Meaning of the Word ‘Revolutionary’” in Political Writings
Film: Andrzej Wajda, Danton, 1983 (on reserve in Falvey Library)
Optional
Hannah Arendt, On Violence
Krishan Kumar, “Revolution” in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas
Félix Gilbert, “Revolution” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas (available online through Falvey Library)
Karl Griewank, “Emergence of the Concept of Revolution” in Revolution
Keith Michael Baker, “Revolution” in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, Vol. 2, The Political Culture of the French Revolution
Reinhardt Koselleck, “Historical Criteria of the Modern Concept of Revolution” in Futures Past
Alain Rey, “Révolution”, histoire d’un mot
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution 1789-1848
§3. Toward a Radical History of Revolution
Required
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Chapters 4-6)
Eric Hobsbawm, “Hannah Arendt on Revolution” in Revolutionaries
Optional
Film: Robert Enrico and Richard Heffron, La révolution française, 2011 (on reserve in Falvey Library; no English subtitles)
Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution
Georges Lefebvre, The French Revolution
David Armitage, “Every Great Revolution Is a Civil War”
Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Eds., The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760-1840
Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime
Robert Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800
SOCIETY
§4. What Is a Social Revolution?
Required
François Furet, “Democracy and Utopia”
Declaration of the Rights of Man
Optional
François Furet, “L’idée française de la révolution”
George Comninel, “The French Revolution as Bourgeois Revolution: Orthodoxy and Challenge” in Rethinking the French Revolution
Neil Davidson, How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions?
Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment
Sieyès, Qu’est-ce que le tiers-état?
Stathis Kouvelakis, Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx
Gary Kates, Ed., The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies
Nikki R. Keddie, Ed., Debating Revolutions
John Foran, David Lane, and Andreja Zivkovic, Eds., Revolution in the Making of the Modern World: Social Identities, Globalization, and Modernity
§5. Political Subjectivities: Class, Gender, Race
Required
Condorcet, “On Slavery” and “On the Emancipation of Women” in Political Writings
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (prefatory letter and chapters 1-4, or p. 67-155)
Optional
Valentine Moghadam, “Modernizing Women: Reforms, Revolutions, and the Woman Question” in Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East
Joan Landes, “The History of Feminism: Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Olympe de Gouges, Oeuvres
David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity
Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man
Angela Davis, Women, Race & Class
Gary B. Nash, Race and Revolution
§6. Marxism Versus Anarchism
Session Organized with the Participation of John-Patrick Schultz
Required
Karl Marx, Capital 1.10
Karl Marx, Capital 1.32
Karl Marx, Capital 3.27
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (Introduction)
Optional
Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy
Karl Marx, Capital 1.25
The Marx-Engels Reader
Albert Fried and Ronald Sanders, Socialist Thought: A Documentary History
Rosa Luxemburg, The Rosa Luxemburg Reader
V.I. Lenin, Essential Works of Lenin
Clara Zetkin, “Lenin on the Women’s Question”
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks
AGENCY
§7. Revolutions Made and Unmade
Required
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (Chapters 1-2)
Jack A. Goldstone, “Theories of Revolution: The Third Generation”
Optional
Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions
Saba Mahmood, “Agency, Gender, and Embodiment” in Politics of Piety
James DeFronzo, Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements
John Foran, Ed., Theorizing Revolution
Jack Martin, Jeff Sugarman, Janice Thompson, Psychology and the Question of Agency
Jack Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World
§8. Toward a Multi-Agential Theory of Revolution (3/26 at Villanova)
Required
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (Chapters 3-4)
Optional
Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason
Cornelius Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 1-3
Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social
Margaret S. Archer, Culture and Agency
E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class
Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution
Films: Peter Watkins, La commune, 2000; Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin, 1925 and October, 1928
§9. Political Efficacy (4/2 at Villanova)
Required
David Graeber, “Revolutions in Reverse” in Revolutions in Reverse
Thomas Frank, “To the Precinct Station: How Theory Met Practice… and Drove It Absolutely Crazy” in The Baffler no. 21
Optional
Cornelius Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 1-3
Paul Cardan, a.k.a. Cornelius Castoriadis, “Redefining Revolution”
Murray Bookchin, “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought”
David Graeber, “A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse”
David Graeber, Direct Action
Johann Hari, “Protest Works: Just Look at the Proof,” The Independent, October 29, 2010.
INTERMEZZO
§10. Writing Revolution (4/9 at Villanova)
Required
Victor Hugo, Ninety-Three
Optional
Victor Hugo, “Reply to an Act of Accusation”
Victor Hugo, Bug-Jargal
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Leo Tolstoy, “Epilogue: Part Two” in War and Peace
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
NORMATIVITY
§11. Toward an Immanent Theory of Normativity (4/9 at Villanova)
Required
Pierre Macherey, In a Materialist Way (selection)
Franz Kafka, “Before the Law”
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “Immanence and Desire” in Kafka
Optional
Michel Foucault, “Preface to Transgression”
Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological
Jacques Bouveresse, La force de la règle
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language
Jacques Derrida, “Before the Law” in Acts of Literature
§12. Metanormativity, Historical Emergence and Agency without Agents (4/23 at Villanova)
Nota bene: §13 will take place on 4/16
Required
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality (Preface and First Essay)
Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”
Optional
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
THE CONTEMPORARY CONJUNCTURE
§13. Topological Capture: Thinking the Present (4/16 from 4-6:30 p.m. at The Wooden Shoe)
Required
Alain Badiou, The Rebirth of History (first half of the book)
Film: Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark
Optional
Andrew Whitehead, “Eric Hobsbawm on 2011”
Perry Anderson, “On the Concatenation in the Arab World”
Jürgen Habermas, “The New Obscurity: The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Exhaustion of Utopian Energies”
Alain Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis
Hamid Dabashi, The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Declaration
Slavoj Žižek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously
§14. Mapping the Contemporary Revolutionary Conjuncture (4/25 from 5-7:30 p.m. at The Wooden Shoe)
Required
Alain Badiou, The Rebirth of History (second half of the book)
Optional
Alain Badiou, Philosophy for Militants
Noam Chomsky, Occupy
Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto
Paul Mason, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions
Slavoj Žižek, Demanding the Impossible
Final Research Projects
5/9: Rough drafts are due
5/9-5/14: Virtual research symposium
5/18: Final papers due
Rethinking, Reworking Revolution 