Backgrounds to Contemporary Theory

In chapter 4 of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind, a story is told about a confrontation between a Lord (Herr) and a Bondsman (Knecht).  The story conveys how consciousness is born. This story, subsequently better known as the confrontation between Master and Slave, has been appropriated and revised again and again in figures like Marx and Nietzsche, Sartre, De Beauvoir, and Fanon, Freud and Lacan, Emmanuel Levinas, Carl Schmitt, Slavoj Zizek, and Judith Butler.  The premise of this course is that one can understand much of which is (and isn’t) most significant and interesting in contemporary cultural theory by coming to an understanding Hegel’s argument, and tracing the paths by which thinkers revise and return to it as well as some of the arguments around it. This course is intended for both graduates and undergraduates.  There are no prerequisites, but the material is strenuous, and students will clearly have an easier time if they start out with some idea of what the thinkers above are doing and why.  Helpful preparatory readings might include Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy and Judith Butler, Gender Trouble.