| Kommentar |
Freedom, and its denial in oppression and domination, is a key concept in traditional political theory as well as in 20th century liberatory struggles by feminist, lgbtq+, decolonial, and anti-racist movements. Yet, in recent years we increasingly witness right-wing actors in the US and elsewhere invoking ‘freedom’ to undo the legacy of these movements. Indeed, there is a longstanding criticism of freedom, in Marxist as well as poststructuralist traditions: when understood individualistically, ‘freedom’ denies the social relations that are constitutive of a subject, obfuscating and enabling forms of domination such as exploitation and disciplinary control. In this project seminar, we take a closer look at this contested concept, paying special attention to feminist and decolonial existentialism as offering a potential counter-archive to liberal and neoliberal definitions. Such existentialist approaches are particularly promising because in recent years, much scholarship has been published that extends and diversifies its lineages, decentering authors like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty to include often-overlooked traditions that emerged out of political and social struggles (Black US liberationism, Hispanic and Latin American philosophy, and Arab existentialism), as well as contemporary fields (especially Latin* and Chican* feminism and Caribbean philosophy).
We ask questions such as: can freedom be theorized as a collective practice, and how, if at all, does it relate to the construction of a new postcolonial identity, such as “the Mexican” (Uranga, 2021), a Arab subject (Di-Capua, 2012), or the Black man (Baldwin, Fanon)? What forms of oppression exist, and how do they relate to different groups and their political struggles (Young, Frye)? How can we think of freedom, oppression, and domination in a spatially differentiated manner, such as the private-public divide?
In the first part of this project seminar, we study a selection of texts problematizing freedom at the intersection with critiques of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism.
In the second half, we will engage in a collective research project that seeks to further the diversification of existentialism, where in smaller groups students will focus on one (subset of) author(s).
This a bilingual (German-English) course: the main language of instruction is English but students can participate in German, and the ability to understand both languages in listening and reading is a prerequisite. Proficiency in other languages (such as French, Spanish, Arabic) will be a great asset but is not a requirement. |
| Literatur |
- Aho, Kevin, Megan Altman, and Hans Pedersen, eds. 2024. The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Existentialism. London, New York: Taylor & Francis.
- Beauvoir, Simone de. 2011. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevalier. New York: Vintage Books.
- Di-Capua, Yoav. 2012. “Arab Existentialism: An Invisible Chapter in the Intellectual History of Decolonization.” The American Historical Review 117 (4): 1061–91.
- Fanon, Frantz. 2008. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press.
- Foucault, M., Arnold I. Davidson, and Graham Burchell. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
- Frye, Marilyn. 1983. “Oppression.” In The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory, 1–16. Freedom: The Crossing Press.
- Heter, T. Storm, and Kris F. Sealey, eds. 2023. Creolizing Sartre. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Rowman & Littlefield.
- Lugones, Maria C. 1990. “Structure/Antistructure and Agency Under Oppression.” The Journal of Philosophy 87 (10): 500–507.
- Mendieta, Eduardo. 2012. “Existentialisms in the Hispanic and Latin American Worlds: El Quixote and Its Existential Children.” In Situating Existentialism: Key Texts in Context, edited by Jonathan Judaken and Robert Bernasconi. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Ortega, Mariana. 2016. In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self. Albany: SUNY Press.
- Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1973. Existentialism and Humanism. Eyre Methuen.
- Uranga, Emilio. 2021. Emilio Uranga’s Analysis of Mexican Being: A Translation and Critical Introduction. London: Bloomsbury.
- Weir, Allison. 2017. “Feminism and Freedom.” Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy, January. https://www.academia.edu/48916963/Feminism_and_Freedom.
- Wright, Richard. 2008. Black Power: Three Books from Exile: Black Power ; The Color Curtain ; and White Man, Listen! New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Power.html?hl=nl&id=HeYFYIbXemgC.
- Young, Iris Marion. 2011. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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