CRITICAL THEORY (4 Week Course)
Course Introduction
The concerns and traditions of critical theory are broad and ever-increasing. The term was first associated with the work of those philosophers and social theorists who made up the Frankfurt School -- founded at Goethe University in 1929, and led by Theodore Adorno and Max Horkenheimer. Thereafter, however, it also came to encompass the work of later French thinkers commonly grouped together under the label of ‘post-structuralism’. While the two traditions are sometimes viewed as rivals, there is a clear set of common preoccupations and concerns, which we will explore in this module.
Course Overview
In this 4-week course we will read a selection of key texts from the Frankfurt School and Poststructuralist traditions of critical theory. Our classes will be structured around discussion of guided reading questions, provided one week in advance of the class. We will cover all of the above in close detail, focusing on the following key areas in particular:
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the bourgeois subject and its illusory autonomy
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the oppressive functioning of scientific and technological reason, particularly in its application to the social domain
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modernist aesthetic experience and its radicalising potential
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close reading and radical particularity in the aesthetic artefact
