Theory of Culture

COURSE DESCRIPTION Theory of Culture invites students to critically examine the ways by which contemporary philosophical and theoretical discourses have challenged the representation of western culture as the epitome of all cultures. The course opens with a critical exegesis of the Black Atlantic as the thick network of colonial modernity, which is consolidated on board of the slave ships and on the slave plantations that sprawl across the Caribbean islands and the Americas (Course Unit 1). 

Reading the Black Atlantic as a transmodern site (Enrique Dussel, Walter Mignolo) challenges our understanding of modernity as a European phenomenon. The Black (and Brown) Atlantic invites to think of colonial modernity as the site of “overlapping territories and intertwined histories” (Edward Said), where new connections, relations, and affiliations between oppositional and different cultures arise often as a result of colonial and imperial violence (Course Unit 2).

Having crossed the Atlantic to the American shores on board of the slave ship Zong, while listening to the woes of slaves and admiring the strength of Imoinda and Caliban to resist their colonisers and survive to claim the future (Course Units 1 &2), we will examine the political and social phenomenon of American Exceptionalism through two historical events that transformed the US culture and had a global impact on world politics and cultural relations, namely, the Vietnam War and the War on Terror (Course Unit 3). 

In the wake of neo-imperialism and a new regime of biopolitics that is triggered by the state of emergency that followed the 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, we will question the ways cultures are affected by the neoliberal order in the present age. Why do neo-nationalist and neo-racist movements continue to develop despite the past and present histories of the disaster of the human? 

Haunted by Walter Benjamin’s Thesis VII, There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism,” we will ask this question throughout our course (Course Unit 4). We will end with a discussion about cultural politics and crises in the present (Course Unit 5). 

Key Concepts

The course introduces the students to the following concepts relevant to cultural and literary studies: colonial modernity, trans-modernity, imperialism, globalization, exceptionalism, nationalism, biopolitics and transnationalism, among others. We will approach these concepts from the viewpoint of different discourses and their respective methodological and theoretical perspectives, namely, Deconstruction, Feminism, Gender Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Decolonial Studies and Marxism. In the process of this course, we will study a variety of texts from theory, literature, film and the arts. 

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2021