68: Illusion and Paradox Alhelí de María Alvarado-Díaz

Transcription

1 68: Illusion and Paradox Alhelí de María Alvarado-Díaz Introduction This seminar will expose you to classical texts in political theory relating to revolutionary action, political ethics and social militancy from the Communist Manifesto to The course will explore the idea of revolutionary ethics as conceived by Western and non-western political philosophers and militants. The discussion will stress the connection between philosophers and revolutionary leaders and the transformation of the idea of radical politics through the dialogue between these two discourses (the philosophical and the militant). Authors will be examined according to their historical context and their role in the tradition of political thought and the history of radical politics from 1848 to the mid-sixties. The purpose is to expose you to different discourses of political militancy and radical politics and to reflect on the ethical implications of the history of radical thought and action in comparative perspective. We will explore the pursuit of an ideal society through the history of radical movements from 1848 to the social mobilization of 1968 militants across the world. Several central questions will orient this course: How did grassroots movements appropriate the philosophy of radical politics and the theory of revolutionary mobilization, engendering a historical form of ethics and social struggle? How did collective organization strive for an idea of social justice and civil equality? How did the narrative of individual rights orient militant politics through 1968? In what sense did the sixties represent a moment of historical culmination in the difficult journey of revolutionary politics from Marx to the young militants of the May Movement? How did the political shortcomings of the sixties influence the rise of political individualism and the decline in political engagement? The course will conclude with a discussion of the reception of the sixties and the prospects of militant engagement and collective political life today. Alvarado-Díaz, Alhelí de María

2 Required Texts Julian Bourg, From revolution to ethics: May 1968 and contemporary French thought (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007) Howard Brick, Age of contradiction: American thought and culture in the 1960s (Cornell University Press, 2000) Aimé Césaire, Discourse on colonialism (Monthly Review Press, 2000). Guy Debord, The society of the spectacle (Zone Books,1994) François Furet, Passing of an illusion: the idea of communism in the twentieth century (University of Chicago Press, 2000) Leszek Kolakowski, Main currents of Marxism: The founders, the golden age, the breakdown (W. W. Norton, 2008) Herbert Marcuse, One-dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society (Beacon Press,1991) James Miller, Democracy is in the streets: From Port Huron to the siege of Chicago (Harvard University Press, 1994) Course Requirements Research Paper 50% Weekly Responses 20% Oral Presentation 10% Class Participation 20% Alvarado-Díaz, Alhelí de María 2

3 Part I: Radical Politics: Theory, Practice, Paradoxes ( ) Session I: Introduction: The Idea of Revolutionary Politics The Conditions for Revolutionary Action The Problem of Time and Expectations Revolutionary Leadership and the Question of Organization Case Study: The Manifesto of 1848 Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) and Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League (1850) in The Marx-Engels Reader (Norton, 1978) Contextual Reading: Leszek Kolakowski, The Origin of Dialectic, Marx s Thought in its Earliest Phase, Marx s Early Political and Philosophical Writings in Main Currents of Marxism (Norton, 2005) Session II: Lenin s Program of Radical Action The Spontaneity of the Masses Collective Resistance and Consciousness Consciousness, Identity and Collective Action Case Study: The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 V.I. Lenin, What is to be Done? Burning Questions of our Movement (1902), The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution (1917) and Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920) in The Lenin Anthology (Norton, 1975) Marxism in Russia before the Rise of Bolshevism, Philosophy and Politics in the Bolshevik Movement, The First Phase of Soviet Marxism, Marxism as the Ideology of the Soviet State Main Currents of Marxism (Norton, 2005) Martin Malia, Why Russia First? and The Road to October: 1917 in The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia (Free Press, 1995) Alvarado-Díaz, Alhelí de María 3

4 Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Setting in The Russian Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2008) Session III: Rosa Luxemburg and the Dilemma of Compromise The Problem of Political Reform The Shortcomings of Revolutionary Leadership Can there be revolutions without compromises? Rosa Luxemburg, Social Reform or Revolution ( ) and Theory and Practice (1910) in The Rosa Luxemburg Reader (Monthly Review Press, 2004) Georg Lukács, The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg, Towards a Methodology of the Problem of Organization in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (MIT Press, 1972) Leszek Kolakowski, Rosa Luxemburg and the Revolutionary Left in Main Currents of Marxism (Norton, 2005) Session IV: The Radicals Leap: Revolution and Guerrilla Action The Ethics of Guerrilla Warfare The Logic of Discipline and Obedience Radical Militancy and the Experience of Political Engagement Case Studies: Mao Zedong and Ernesto Guevara Primary Sources Mao Zedong, Part I: Basic Tactics and Part VI: Win the Masses in Collected Writings of Chairman Mao (Paso Norte Press, 2009) Mao Zedong, What is Guerrilla Warfare?, Organization for Guerrilla Warfare and The Political Problems of Guerrilla Warfare in The Red Book of Guerrilla Warfare (Paso Norte Press, 2010) Ernesto Guevara, General Principles of Guerrilla Warfare and The Guerilla Band in Guerrilla Warfare (University of Nebraska Press, 1998) Alvarado-Díaz, Alhelí de María 4

5 Jon Lee Anderson, My Historic Duty, Individualism Must Disappear, and The Necessary Sacrifice in Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (Grove Press, 2010) Paco Ignacio Taibo, Commander, Controversy, The Sierra and the Plains, The Offensive in Guevara, Also Known as Che (St. Martin s Griffin, 1999) Maurice Meisner, Peasant Revolution, Mao Zedong in Power, Utopianism in Mao Zedong: A Political and Intellectual Portrait (Polity, 2007) Session V: The Rise of the Anti-Imperialist Sensibility The Limits of Marx and Western Revolutionary Theory The Anger of the Colonized Western Intellectual Militancy and the Limits of Engagement Case Study: The French-Algerian War Primary Sources Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (Monthly Review Press, 2001) Albert Memmi, Portrait of the Colonized in The Colonizer and the Colonized (Beacon Press, 1991) Robert C. Young, Concepts in History: Colonialism, Imperialism, Neocolonialism, Postcolonialism in Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2001) James Le Sueur, History and Franco-Muslim Reconciliation: French Colonialism in Algeria and Imbroglios and Intellectual Legitimacy: Anticolonialism and the Comité d Action in Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics During the Decolonization of Algeria (University of Nebraska Press, 2005) Todd Shepard, Inventing Decolonization and Making Algerians in The Invention of Decolonization (Cornell University Press, 2006) Session VI: Nanterre From Ideological Faith to the Struggle for Rights The Decline of the Soviet Myth Redefining the Idea of Revolutionary Action The Pursuit of a Society of Freedoms Case Studies: French Anti-Totalitarianism and the Movement of Alvarado-Díaz, Alhelí de María 5

6 Primary Sources Daniel Cohn-Bendit, The Student Revolt, The Strategy of the State, Stalinist Bureaucracy and the Class Struggle in France and By Way of Conclusion in Obsolete Communism (AK Press, 2000) Raymond Aron, Political Myths in The Opium of the Intellectuals (Transaction Publishers, 2001) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Destructive Labor Camps in The Gulag Archipelago (Harper Perennial, 2007) Claude Lefort, Politics and Human Rights in The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism (MIT Press, 1986) François Furet, François Furet, The Revolutionary Passion, The Universal Spell of October, Cold War Communism and The Beginning of the End in The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2000) Michael Scott Christofferson, Antitotalitarianism against the Revolutionary Tradition: François Furet s Revisionist History of the French Revolution in French Intellectuals against the Left (Berghahn Books, 2004) Part II: Social Engagement and Political Sensibility after 1968 Session VII: May 68 and the Radicalization of Democracy Collective Autonomy and the Reinvention of Radical Politics The Rejection of Revolutionary Dogma The Return of Popular Sovereignty Case Study: Paris in 1968 Cornelius Castoriadis, Marxism and Revolutionary Theory in The Imaginary Institution of Society (The MIT Press, 1991) Cornelius Castoriadis, The Anticipated Revolution and Socialism and Autonomous Society in Political and Social Writings: Volume 3, (University of Minnesota Press, 1992) Alvarado-Díaz, Alhelí de María 6

7 Claude Lefort, The Fabrication of the Social in Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2007) Miguel Abensour, Of Insurgent Democracy, The Utopia of the Rational State, Savage Democracy and the Principle of Anarchy in Democracy against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian Movement (Polity, 2011) Rutherford et al. The Global Sixties in New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness, (Between the Lines, 2009) Andrew Feenberg and Jim Freedman, What Happened in May: A Chronicle and Students versus Society in When Poetry ruled the Streets (State University of New York Press, 2001) Julian Bourg, Cobblestone Beaches in From Revolution to Ethics (McGill-Queen s University Press, 2007) Michael Seidman, The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968 (Berghahn Books, 2004) Session VIII: Challenging the Society of the Spectacle The Society of Consumers Individuals as Objects and Machines Human Sensibility in an Age of Technology Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (Black & Red, 2000) Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Society in One-Dimensional Man (Beacon Press, 1991) Raoûl Vaneigem, The Impossibility of Participation and The Impossibility of Communication in The Revolution of Everyday Life (PM Press 2011) Jean Baudrillard, Mass Media, Sex and Leisure in The Consumer Society (Sage Publications, 1998) Alvarado-Díaz, Alhelí de María 7

8 James Williams, States of Society: The Libidinal Economy in Lyotard: Towards a Postmodern Philosophy (Polity, 1998) Lizabeth Cohen, The Political Culture of Mass Consumption in A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Vintage, 2003) Session IX: The Revolutionary Rebirth of America University Militancy and Protests against the Vietnam War The Idea of Collective Solidarity The Late Sixties and the Politics of Desire Case Studies: Columbia University in 1968 Primary Source: Archibald Cox et al., Crisis at Columbia 1968 in Wilson Smith and Thomas Bender, eds., American Higher Education Transformed, : Documenting the National Discourse (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Paul Berman, The Dream of a New Society and Generation in A Tale of Two Utopias (Norton, 1997) Julian Bourg, Your Sexual Revolution is not Ours in From Revolution to Ethics (McGill-Queen s University Press, 2007) Moya Lloyd, Performing Radical Democracy in The Politics of Radical Democracy (Edinburgh University Press, 2009) James Miller, Rediscovering Politics, Taking Democracy Seriously, Building a Movement in Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (Harvard University Press, 1994) Rutherford et al. The Global Sixties in New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness, (Between the Lines, 2009) Richard Wolin, May 1968: The Triumph of Libidinal Politics in The Wind from the East. French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (Princeton University Press, 2010) Alvarado-Díaz, Alhelí de María 8

9 Session X: Urban Guerrillas after 1968 Against Capitalist Servitude Material Abundance and Social Discontentment The Rise of Western Terrorism in Post-Fascist Europe Case Study: The Red Army Faction Primary Documents: J. Smith and André Moncourt, Democracy comes to Deutschland, The Reemergence of Revolutionary Politics in West Germany and Taking up the Gun in The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History (PM Press, 2009) Red Army Faction, André Moncourt, Concrete Answers to Concrete Questions, Student Revolt and The Urban Guerrilla in The Urban Guerrilla Concept (Kersplebedeb, 2010) Stefan Aust, The Wild Glory of Terror in Baader-Meinhof. The Inside Story of the R.A.F. (Bodley Head, 2008) Emma Goldman, The Psychology of Political Violence in The Terrorism Reader (Meridian, 1987) Mikkel Thorup, Killing Words: On Justifying Violence in An Intellectual History of Terror. War, Violence and the State (Routledge, 2010) Session XI: The Possibilities of Engagement The Idea of Civil Society after 1968 Rethinking Justice and Individual Rights The True Force of Courage and Idealism Case Study: Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King Jr., I see the Promised Land, A Testament of Hope and The Trumpet of Conscience in The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (HarperOne, 1986) Alvarado-Díaz, Alhelí de María 9

10 Michael Walzer, The Civil Society Argument in Chantal Mouffe, Dimensions of Radical Democracy (Verso, 1996) Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, The Contemporary Revival of Civil Society in Civil Society and Political Theory (The MIT Press, 1994) Meta Mendel-Reyes, The Thread of Hopeful Memory and Remembering the Sixties in Reclaiming Democracy: The Sixties in Politics and Memory (Routledge, 1996) Session XII: The Paradoxes of Democracy The Democratic Experience Consciousness in an Age of Consumption and Individualism The Revolution Within Robert Dahl, Democratic Theory and Democratic Experience in Seyla Benhabib, Democracy and Difference (Princeton University Press, 1996) Gilles Lipovetsky, Paradoxical Individualism, Hypermodern Times (Polity, 2005) Chantal Mouffe, Democratic Action and the Political Community in Dimensions of Radical Democracy (Verso, 1996) Chantal Mouffe, Introduction: The Democratic Paradox, The Democratic Paradox, (Verso, 2009) Pierre Rosanvallon, The People as Judge, Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust (Cambridge University Press, 2008) Session XIII: Representing the Memory of 68 Screening and Discussion of Bertolucci s The Dreamers Session XIV: Students Presentations of Research and Final Paper Progress (II) Alvarado-Díaz, Alhelí de María 10