SPAN 4780 - [Theories of the Subject]

(crosslisted) COML 4121
(LA-AS)

Spring. Next offered 2016-2017. 4 credits.

Conducted in English.

B. Bosteels.

This seminar will revisit some major texts and concerns in the theoretical humanities that develop genealogical, psychoanalytical or political theories of the subject, roughly from Nietzsche until today. The goal is to come to a critical understanding of the centrality of this notion of this subject as one of the founding concepts of modernity, as well as to draw out all of the consequences of this crisis in radical humanistic (or even posthumanist) thought today. Thinkers to be discussed further include Freud, Foucault, Butler, Badiou, Rozitchner, and Zizek.