FREN 6015 - [The Politics of Care in African Literature]

(crosslisted) ASRC 6015

Fall. Not offered: 2022-2023. Next offered: 2023-2024. 4 credits. Student option grading.

I. Terhmina.

Confined to the figure of the “care-giver,” the concept of care has long been seen as apolitical. This course explores African aesthetic works in the light of recent debates that have taken “care” seriously as an ethical, philosophical, and political category, one with the potential to disrupt conventions conceptions of the modern political subject. In addition to being deeply entangled with questions of race, gender, and class. African works by Traore, N’Diaye, and others, are examined through a host of different philosophical lenses, from the bioethical concerns with reproductive rights and the issue of abortion (Gilligan; Butler), to the tradition of “cura” which extends from Seneca to Kierkegaard, to the centrality of care in articulating an “embodied citizenship” (Fleury; ubuntu).