Political Science 622: Political Theory Graduate Field
Seminar
Prof. Leonard Feldman
Spring 2006
DRAFT: SUBJECT TO REVISION
Office: PLC 914
Office Hours:
Phone: 6-1479
Email: lfeldman@uoregon.edu
Homepage: www.uoregon.edu/~lfeldman
This is the core graduate seminar in political theory. The field of political theory is vast, and no one course can hope to do justice to it. Because canonical texts from Plato to Nietzsche are well-covered in the PS 530-532 sequence, we will focus on contemporary political theory in this seminar.
The course is organized around the concept of freedom. We will survey some of the key approaches in contemporary political theory: liberal, communitarian, civic republican, discourse ethics, feminist, and post-structuralist, with particular attention to their accounts of freedom. What do we mean by freedom, who is the subject of freedom, and how is freedom related to the sphere of the political? In so doing, we will explore how "the political" is itself conceptualized, and how different political theories figure the relationship between the self or subject and the political order.
á Write six 1-2 page response papers over the course of the quarter (20%)
á Class Participation: Regular participation in seminar discussion and participate once as official presenter: A 10 minute presentation of the key arguments of the text, plus several questions to begin discussion (20%)
á Write an annotated bibliography on the secondary material on one theorist. (25%)
See this useful guide:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_annotatedbib.html
á Write a take-home "practice comp" (15 pages, 35%)
Books available for purchase
at the UO Bookstore:
Required:
1. John Rawls, Justice as
Fairness: A Restatement
2. Phillip Pettit, Republicanism:
A Theory of Freedom and Government
3. Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2
4. Jurgen Habermas, The
Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory
5. Michel Foucault, History of
Sexuality, vol. 1
6. Giorgio Agamben, Means without End: Notes on Politics
7. Nancy Hirschmann, The Subject
of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom
Recommended/Background:
1. Andrew Vincent, The Nature of Political Theory (library reserve)
2. Bonnie Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (library reserve)
Schedule of Classes:
Note: Asterisked readings will be available
1. Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty"
2. Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question"
John Rawls, Justice as
Fairness: A Restatement
Week Five: The Discourse
Theory of Deliberative Democracy
Week Six: Foucault: Biopower and the Illusion of Liberation
1.
Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality vol 1: An
Introduction
2. Nikolas Rose, "The Politics of Life Itself"
3. Charles Taylor, "Foucault on Freedom and Truth," Philosophical Papers 2
Week Seven: Post-structuralism: Governmentality and Freedom
1. Foucault, "Governmentality," in The Foucault Effect
2. Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom, introduction and chapter 2
3. Wendy Brown, "Wounded Attachments," States of Injury
Week Eight: Feminist approaches to Freedom and the Political
Nancy Hirschmann, The Subject
of Liberty
Week Nine: (Post-)Marxism and Psychoanalysis