Power, Rights, and Social Change: Achieving Justice
Professor Bernard E. Harcourt
Bernard E. Harcourt is a distinguished critical theorist, legal advocate, and prolific writer and editor. In his books, articles, and teaching, his scholarship focuses on punishment practices and political economy, critical theory and praxis, and political protest.
Harcourt is the founding director of the Initiative for a Just Society at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought, which brings contemporary critical theory and practice to bear on current social problems and seeks to address them through practical engagements, including litigation and public policy transformation.
Harcourt is the author or editor of more than a dozen books. His most recent book, Critique & Praxis: A Critical Philosophy of Illusions, Values, and Action (2020), charts a vision for political action and social transformation. In The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens (2018), Harcourt examines how techniques of counterinsurgency warfare spread to U.S. domestic policy and policing.
His previous books include Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age (2015), The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order (2011), Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age (2007), Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing (2001), and Occupy: Three Inquiries in Disobedience (2013), with W. J. T. Mitchell and Michael Taussig. In addition, Harcourt has edited or co-edited and annotated many volumes of the lectures of philosopher Michel Foucault in French and English, as well as the French edition of Discipline and Punish for the official Pléiade edition of the complete works at Gallimard.
Harcourt began his legal career representing individuals on Alabama’s death row, working with Bryan Stevenson at what is now the Equal Justice Initiative, in Montgomery, Alabama. He continues to represent pro bono persons sentenced to death and life imprisonment without parole, as well as those detained at Guantanamo Bay. In 2019, Harcourt was awarded the New York City Bar Association Norman J. Redlich Capital Defense Distinguished Service Award, a lifetime achievement award for his work on behalf of individuals on death row.
Harcourt also served on human rights missions to South Africa and Guatemala, and has actively challenged the Trump administration’s Muslim Ban, representing pro bono a Syrian medical resident excluded under the executive order, as well as Moseb Zeiton, a Columbia SIPA student.
Before joining Columbia Law, in 2014, Harcourt taught at the University of Chicago, where he was the chairman of the Political Science Department and the Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Political Science. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, New York University, and the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey.
Harcourt is a directeur d’études at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
He served as a law clerk for Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
course details
POLS UN3173
Course days/times: TR 4:10 – 5:25pm Course location: 413 Kent Hall Recitation section: Required, TBD Teaching assistants: Charleyne Biondi (cb3283@columbia.edu), Camila Vergara (cv2272@columbia.edu)Office hours: Wednesday 3-5pm (please make appointment with Ghislaine Pagès)
Course Description
Course Requirements
Students will be required to read the assigned materials, attend the two weekly lectures and one weekly recitation section, and participate in class discussion.
Students will be required to read a serious newspaper of their choice on a regular basis (such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, etc.). On three occasions during the semester, noted in the syllabus, each student will be required to share a link to one newspaper article of special interest on the class blog, with a short blog post of one or two paragraphs describing it and explaining how it relates to the class discussion. From those articles, the instructor will choose one shared newspaper article to discuss together in class the following week.
Students will be required to write two 1,000-word essays due on the Thursday at 11:59PM of weeks 4 and 11 (as indicated on the syllabus). Students will post these two essays on our Courseworks site. The prompts for the two essays are on the Courseworks site in the Files section and attached as an appendix to this syllabus.
There will be a one hour mid-term exam focused on the assigned readings. The description of mid-term exam format is on Courseworks site in the Files section and attached as an appendix to this syllabus.
There will be a final paper of no more than 2,000 words that will ask you to develop, on the basis of our assigned readings and classroom discussion, a fully theorized position of your own addressing how best to resolve a current problem of social justice. The prompt for the final paper is on the Courseworks site in the Files section and attached as an appendix to this syllabus.
The final grade for the course will be determined in the following manner:
Lecture and recitation section attendance and participation, and blog posts (20%)
Two essays (15% each)
Midterm exam (20%)
Final paper (30%)
Statement Regarding Academic Integrity
Each student in this course is expected to abide by the Columbia University Code of Academic Integrity. Any work submitted by a student in this course for academic credit must be the student’s own work. The complete Faculty Statement on Academic Integrity can be found at: https://www.college.columbia.edu/academics/integrity-statement
and the Columbia University Undergraduate Guide to Academic Integrity can be found here: https://www.college.columbia.edu/academics/academicintegrity
Any violation of the Academic Code of Integrity will be forwarded to the Office of Judicial Affairs and Community Standards and will result in a failing grade for the course.
Statement Regarding disability accommodations
If you are a student with a disability and have a DS-certified Accommodation Letter, please come to my office hours to confirm your accommodation needs. If you believe that you might have a disability that requires accommodation, you should contact Disability Services at 212-854-2388 and disability@columbia.edu.
Reading materials
All assigned readings will be available on Courseworks.
By way of background, before the course starts, I would like you to please read Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014). The book is on reserve in the law and business libraries and available at BookCulture.
I have also listed “Other bibliographical references” for certain sessions; these are not included in Courseworks (mostly), but are for your edification if you are interested in doing further research.
Laptop Policy
No laptops will be allowed in class unless you have accommodations to use a laptop.
Critique and Praxis 13/13
During the academic year 2018-2019, I will also be giving a graduate seminar on related themes of political change and practice, called Praxis 13/13. It will be meeting on select Wednesday evenings throughout the academic year (schedule here). The seminars are open to the public, so please feel free to join us. Please email Ghisaline Pàges (gmp2142@columbia.edu) to tell her you will join. There are usually over 100 people there, so it is easy to sit in back and just listen.
Syllabus
Before you begin the course, over the Labor Day weekend, please read Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014). The book is available for purchase at BookCulture and is on reserve at the law and business libraries. You may also be interested in watching Bryan Stevenson’s Ted Talk (2012), available at
https://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice
Introduction
A. The Problems of Justice [Class #1: Sept. 4]
We face today, in the United States and globally, a range of social justice problems that involve inequalities of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, massive over-incarceration, challenges to the environment, discrimination against immigrants and refugees, inadequacies in political representation and voting, and human rights violations. These problems are very concrete, but they also raise deep theoretical questions. To address them fully, we need to think both practically and critically, and draw on our core intellectual traditions. In this first class, we will introduce one area of social justice—the problem of an overly punitive society—and begin to explore the practical problems of how to seek social change.
Readings:
William Wells Brown, Clotel, or The President’s Daughter (Boston: St. Martin’s, 2nd edition, 2011) (excerpts)
Danielle Allen, “American Inferno: A Crime Committed at Fifteen Derailed My Cousin’s Life. Why Couldn’t I Save Him?” The New Yorker, July 24, 2017, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/24/the-life-of-a-south-central-statistic
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Penguin, 2014) (excerpts).
Peter Applebome, “Alabama Releases Man Held on Death Row for Six Years,” New York Times, March 3, 1993
B. The Landscape of Justice [Class #2: Sept. 6]
In this first lecture, we will take a tour of the major areas of social justice struggle, from mass incarceration and criminal justice reform, to matters of racial, ethnic, gender, and sexuality equality, to immigration, voting rights, environmental justice, and international human rights—and some of the problems that surround these struggles. We will begin to read about these areas and begin a conversation about struggles to address social justice.
Readings:
Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (Macmillan, 2015) (excerpts).
Khaled A. Beydoun, “Between Muslim and White: The Legal Construction of Arab American Identity” (November 22, 2014). 69 N.Y.U. Ann. Surv. Am. L. 29 (2013). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2529506
Amicus Brief of the Organization of American Historians in Obergefell v. Hodges (March 2015; written by Professor George Chauncey)
Virginia Eubanks, “Want to Cut Welfare? There’a an App for that” The Nation (March 27, 2015): https://www.thenation.com/article/want-cut-welfare-theres-app/
Virginia Eubanks, “The Digital Poorhouse,” Harper’s (Jan. 2, 2018): https://harpers.org/archive/2018/01/the-digital-poorhouse/
I. Two Paradigms of Justice
In this first part, we will tease out the two major conceptions of justice, what might be referred to as a “liberal legal” position that emerged with modern political thought, and a more ancient “substantive justice” or “natural justice” position that preceded it. These are, to be sure, broad and encompassing paradigms, but the contrast is foundational to how we think about justice today. During this first part, we will draw heavily on the foundations of the Core Curriculum.
A. The Liberal Conception of Law and Legality
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), considered one of the first modern political theorists, had a deeply authoritarian streak, and yet, as we will see, set important foundations for the liberal conception of the rule of law. The Hobbesian notion of law as “hedges” was then developed and refined by modern political thinkers, such as Locke, Wollstonecraft, and Mill. In this section, we will explore this “rule of law” conception of justice, putting in conversation the earlier writings of Hobbes, Locke, Wollstonecraft, and Mill, with present expressions, including John Rawls and Judith Shklar.
1. The Foundations of Legal Liberalism [Class #3: Sept. 11]
Readings:
Justice Abe Fortas, Concerning Dissent and Disobedience (New American Library, 1968) (excerpts)
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), chapter 30.
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, in Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), §§ 25-32, 52-58,77-94, and 222-232.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (New York: Penguin, 1982), author’s introduction, dedication, chapters 1, 2 and 9.
2. The Tradition of Legal Liberalism [Class #4: Sept. 13]
Readings:
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (New York: Norton, 1975), chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5.
John Rawls, “The Rule of Law,” A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), §38, pp. 235-243.
Judith N. Shklar, “Political Theory and the Rule of Law,” in The Rule of Law: Ideal or Ideology, eds. Hutchinson and Monahan (Toronto: Carswell, 1987).
Optional Readings:
Jennifer Gonnerman, “Before the Law: A boy was accused of taking a backpack. The courts took the next three years of his life,” The New Yorker, Oct. 6, 2014
Kafka, Before the Law
B. Theories of Substantive and Natural Justice
We could contrast the “rule of law tradition” to another conception of justice focused more on substantive outcomes of justice, and often revolving around notions of nature, natural law, sometimes even divine law. This conception traces to antiquity and has been expressed throughout history. Here we will tease our different dimensions of substantive justice. Students interested in a helpful resource to understand all this should visit: http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwest/#SH1a
1. The Roots of Substantive Justice [Class #5: Sept. 18]
Readings:
Martin Luther King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” The Atlantic, Volume 212, Number 2, pp. 78-88 (August 1963), available at
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 3-14, 156-191.
Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 175-183.
2. The Tradition of Substantive Justice [Class #6: Sept. 20]
Readings:
Plato, The Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 368c-376d, 412b-415d, and 434d-444e.
Plato, The Laws, trans. Thomas L. Pangle (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 734e-745e.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book V
Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), Book 3, Chapters 8-18, pp. 96-117.
Other bibliographical references:
Thomas Aquinas, On Law, Morality, and Politics, ed. William P. Baumgarth and Richard J. Regan, S.J. (called “Law”). Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988 (excerpts)
***First blog post & newspaper article due after Class #6 at 11:59PM***
Assignment: On our Coursework site, please share a weblink to one newspaper article of special interest that relates to our discussions of justice, with a short blog post of one or two paragraphs describing it and explaining how it relates to the class discussion. Make sure to explain how the theories of justice we have been learning enlighten or are enlightened by the news story. Do not just summarize the news item. Relate it to our class discussion.
3. Conceptions of Substantive Justice [Class #7: Sept. 25]
We will discuss the newspaper articles and blog posts. Please also read these texts on the different conceptions of substantive justice.
Readings:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book II, Chapters 6-7.
Nancy Fraser and Sarah Leonard, “Capitalism’s Crisis of Care,” Dissent, Fall 2016, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/nancy-fraser-interview-capitalism-crisis-of-care
Sylvia Federici, Wages Against Housework, (Bristol: Power of Women Collective and Falling Wall Press, 1975), pp. 1-8.
Charles W. Mill, Racial Liberalism, PMLA, 123(5) (2008).
Optional Reading:
Maximilien Robespierre, “On Subsistence,” in Robespierre: Virtue and Terror, trans. John Howe (New York: Verso, 2007), pp. 49-56.
II. Cases in Justice
Having explored two very different paradigms of justice, we will then step back and investigate two areas of social justice in order to begin to critique and formulate our own notions of justice grounded in the philosophical background.
A. The Death Penalty: The Doyle Hamm Case [Class #8: Sept. 27]
In this class, we will discuss the death penalty with specific reference to the Doyle Lee Hamm case in Alabama.
Readings:
Jennifer Gonnerman, “The Long Defense of the Alabama Death-Row Prisoner Doyle Lee Hamm,” New Yorker, September 13, 2016
Bernard E. Harcourt, “The Ghoulish Pursuit of Executing a Terminally Ill Inmate,” New York Times, December 20, 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/opinion/executing-terminally-ill-inmates.html
Liliana Segura, “Another Failed Execution,” The Intercept, March 3, 2018
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/03/doyle-hamm-alabama-execution-lethal-injection/
Roger Cohen, “Death Penalty Madness in Alabama,” New York Times, Feb. 27, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/opinion/death-penalty-alabama-doyle-lee-hamm.html
Bernard E. Harcourt, “The Barbarism of Alabama’s Botched Execution,” New York Review of Books, March 13, 2018
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-barbarism-of-alabamas-botched-execution/
In connection with these readings, you may be interested in viewing (entirely optional):
Bryan Stevenson’s Ted Talk (2012), available at
https://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice
The Roger Hood Lecture delivered at Oxford by BE Harcourt on June 2, 2017, available at https://youtu.be/0hkHxp1RYpo
*** First 1,000-word essay due after Class #8 at 11:59PM ***
Instructions are posted on our Courseworks site in the Files section and attached as an appendix to this syllabus.
B. Fighting Discrimination against Immigrants [Class #9: Oct. 2]
Readings:
Moustafa Bayoumi, This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror (New York: New York University Press, 2015) (excerpts)
Clyde Haberman, “For Yale Law Group Fighting Trump’s Travel Ban, Echoes of 1991,” New York Times, March 6, 2017, availablehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/for-yale-law-group-fighting-trumps-travel-ban-echoes-of-1991.html
Jennifer Gonnerman, “A Syrian Doctor with a Visa Is Suing the Trump Administration,” The New Yorker, February 1, 2017
Jennifer Gonnerman, “A Syrian Doctor Returns to Illinois,” The New Yorker, February 2, 2017
Adam Liptak, “Trump’s Travel Ban Is Upheld by Supreme Court, New York Times, June 26, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/us/politics/supreme-court-trump-travel-ban.html
Trump v. Hawai’i decision, Supreme Court, June 26, 2018 (selection)
III. Critiques, Debates, Controversies
In this section, we will explore the different debates and conversations that have taken place between these different traditions to begin to map some lines of controversy and struggle.
A. Critiques of Authoritarian Tendencies [Class #10: Oct. 4]
Readings:
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966) (excerpts).
Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007) (excerpts).
B. Nineteenth Century Critiques of Liberalism [Class #11: Oct. 9]
Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edition, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978), p. 26-46.
Karl Marx, “The So-Called Primitive Accumulation,” in Capital, Volume I, in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edition, pp. 431-438.
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann, First and Second Essays (selections).
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann, § 29-38 and 257-260.
*** On October 10, 2018, there is a Holder Initiative event on the US Supreme Court with Eric Holder and other speakers, please attend ***
C. The Paradox of Neoliberal Penality [Class #12: Oct. 11]
In this class, we will push the analysis forward from Marx to modern neoliberalism, and explore the critique of “neoliberal penality.”
Readings:
Loïc Wacquant, “Theoretical Coda: A Sketch of the Neoliberal State,” in Loïc Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009)
Bernard E. Harcourt, “Neoliberal Penality: A Brief Genealogy,” Theoretical Criminology, Vol.14(1), pp. 74-92
Bernard E. Harcourt, “The Chicago School,” in The Illusion of Free Markets (Harvard, 2011)
Other bibliographical references:
François Quesnay, “Legal Despotism,” in Despotism in China (1767)
Adam Smith, “On Policing,” Lectures on Jurisprudence
Jeremy Bentham, “The Panopticon Letters”
*** Second blog post & newspaper article due after Class #12 at 11:59PM ***
D. Foucault on Law and Legality [Class #13: Oct. 16]
We will discuss the newspaper articles and blog posts. Then, we will explore Michel Foucault’s rich engagement with legal practice and institutions, and juridical power, in the early 1970s. In particular, we will focus on at least two important ways in which his work drew on the juridical: first, in the development of his ideas about the role of legal forms in the production of truth and the eventual birth of the social sciences; and second, in the transformation of his theories about “illégalismes” and their role in producing new juridical forms like the prison. The readings trace a development of thought from his 1972 lectures on Penal Theories and Institutions, to his Rio lectures in 1973 on the production of truth through legal forms, to his 1973 lectures on The Punitive Society on illégalismes, and finally to his more polished exposition in 1975 in Discipline and Punish.
Readings:
Michel Foucault, The Punitive Society: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1972-1973 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp.139-169.
Michel Foucault, “Illegalities and Delinquency,” Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), pp. 257-292.
Optional Readings:
Michel Foucault, “Truth and Juridical Form (1973),” in Michel Foucault, Power (Essential Works Vol.3) (New York: New Press, 2000), pp. 32-52.
Bernard E. Harcourt, “Course Context,” in Foucault, The Punitive Society, pp. 265-310.
Bernard E. Harcourt, Illusion of Order (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 150-159 (explaining Foucault on law).
E. Contemporary Critiques of Rights [Class #14: Oct. 18]
Readings:
Janet Halley, “Sexuality Harassment,” pp. 80-104, in Catherine MacKinnon & Reva Siegel (eds.), Directions in Sexual Harassment Law (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002)
Wendy Brown, “Suffering the Paradox of Rights,” Constellations, Vol. 7 (2000)
Other bibliographical references:
Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Duncan Kennedy, “Critique of Rights,” in Left Liberalism/Left Legalism (excerpts)
Stephanie DeGooyer, Alastair Hunt, Samuel Moyn, and Astra Taylor, The Right to Have Rights (New York: Verso, 2018)
Patricia J. Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991)
IV. Forms of Political Intervention
In this section, we will explore and analyze different forms of political activism—from traditional litigation of civil and political rights to social movements and more radical forms of political praxis, including revolution.
A. Civil and Political Rights
1. The Civil Rights Movement [Class #15: Oct. 23]
Readings:
Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (New York: Penguin, 2015) (excerpts)
Danielle L. McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power (Vintage 2011) (excerpts)
Malcolm X, The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches by Malcolm X. Benjamin Karin, ed. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971) (excerpts).
Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014) (excerpts).
Angela Y. Davis, Angela Davis: An Autobiography (Intl’ Publishers, 2013) (excerpts)
Other bibliographical references:
Sarah Haley, No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity
Kimberle Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review Vol. 43, No. 6 (Jul., 1991), pp. 1241-1299
Branch Taylor, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), excerpts.
Raoul Peck, I am not your Negro (film, 2016).
2. Using the Rights Framework [Class #16: Oct. 25]
Readings:
Jack Greenberg, Litigation For Social Change: Methods, Limits, and Role in Democracy (New York, 1974) (excerpts)
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015)
Gerald N. Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) (excerpts).
B. Social Activism
1. Civil vs. Political Disobedience [Class #17: Oct. 30]
Readings:
David Thoreau, On Civil Disobedience (Applewood Books, 2000) (excerpts)
Hannah Arendt, “Reflections on Civil Disobedience,” New Yorker, September 12, 1970
Bernard E. Harcourt, “Political Disobedience,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 39(1), Autumn 2012, pp. 33-55.
Other bibliographical references:
Stéphane Hessel, Time for Outrage! [Indignez-vous!] (New York: Twelve, 2011)
*** Midterm Exam: In Class Exam in Class #18: Nov. 1 ***
Midterm exam format is posted on our Courseworks site in the Files section and attached as an appendix to this syllabus.
2. Social Movements: #BlackLivesMatter [Class #19: Nov. 8]
Readings:
Barbara Ransby, “Black Lives Matter Is Democracy in Action,” New York Times, October 21, 2017
Jelani Cobb, Where Is BlackLivesMatter Headed?, New Yorker, March 14, 2016
Keeanga-Yamatha Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016) (excerpts).
Other bibliographical references:
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Random House, 2015)
Christopher Lebron The Making of Black Lives Matter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)
*** On November 8, 2018, there is a Holder Initiative event on the 2018 midterms with Eric Holder and other speakers, please attend ***
C. Political and Radical Praxis
1. Infrapolitics [Class #20: Nov. 13]
Readings:
James C. Scott, “The Infrapolitics of Subordinate Groups,” pp. 183-201, in James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990)
Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe, No. 26, Vol. 12(2), June 2008, pp. 1-14
2. Hacktivism [Class #21: Nov. 15]
Readings:
E. Gabriella Coleman, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous. London: Verso, 2015 (excerpts).
Bernard E. Harcourt, Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age (Harvard, 2015) (excerpts)
*** Second 1,000-word essay due after Class #21 at 11:59PM ***
Instructions are posted on our Courseworks site in the Files section and attached as an appendix to this syllabus.
3. Foucault: An Engaged Life [Class #22: Nov. 20]
Readings:
Challenging the Punitive Society: Foucault and the GIP, essays in Carceral Notebooks, Volume 12 (2016) by Cisneros and Harcourt.
Foucault in Brazil, essays in Carceral Notebooks, Volume 13 (2017)
Behrooz Tamari-Ghabrizi, Foucault in Iran. Islamic Revolution After the Enlightenment. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016 (excerpts).
4. On Revolution [Class #23: Nov. 27]
Readings:
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (London: Penguin Classics, 2006), chapter 1 and 5.
Reinhardt Koselleck, “Historical Criteria of the Modern Concept of Revolution,” in Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
Optional Reading:
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edition, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978), p. 594-617.
Mao Zedong, “On Contradiction,” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Foreign Languages Press Peking 1967.
V. The Problem of Violence
A central problem at the heart of political practice is the question of violence and how to relate to it—both in terms of the use of violence by the state and by political activists. It is a problem that cannot be ignored.
A. The Question of Violence [Class #24: Nov. 29]
Readings:
Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” pp. 277-300, in Walter Benjamin, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (New York: Schocken Books, 1986)
Franz Fanon, “On Violence,” pp. 1-62, in Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963)
Sartre, “Preface” to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth
Other bibliographical references:
Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, second essay, § 3-14.
Stokely Carmichael, alias Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (New York: Random House, 1967) (excerpts).
John Brown, address following guilty verdict (November 2, 1859)
Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story (1914) (violence of Suffragettes)
The Battle of Algiers (film, 1970)
***Third blog post & newspaper article due after Class #24 at 11:59PM***
B. Nonviolent Action [Class #25: Dec. 4]
We will discuss the newspaper articles and blog posts. We will then turn to the theory and practice of non-violent resistance.
Readings:
Mohandas Gandhi, Non-Violent Resistance (Satyagraha) (New York: Dover Publications, 2001) (excerpts)
Martin Luther King Jr., “Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” available at http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/rel-viol/MLK-1957.pdf
Karuna Mantena, The Power of Nonviolence, Aeon (2016)
Karuna Mantena, “Another Realism: The Politics of Gandhian Nonviolence,” American Political Science Review 106:2 (2012).
Other bibliographical references:
Banu Bargu, Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
Conclusion: On Enlightenment and Critique [Class #26: Dec. 6]
Readings:
Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” in Kant, Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 54-60.
Michel Foucault, “What is Critique?”, pp. 41-81, in Michel Foucault and Sylvere Lotringer, The Politics of Truth (New York: Semiotext(e), 2007) (excerpts).
Judith Butler, “What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue,” European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/butler/en
Bernard E. Harcourt, “Counter-Critical Theory,” Critical Times, Vol. 1 (2017)
Other bibliographical references:
Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in Michel Foucault: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press, 1997), pp. 303-319.
Jürgen Habermas, “Taking Aim at the Heart of the Present: On Foucault’s Lecture on Kant’s What is Enlightenment?” in Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate, ed. Michael Kelly (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 149-154.
Etienne Balibar, “Critique in the 21st Century,” Radical Philosophy, 200 (Nov/Dec 2016), https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/critique-in-the-21st-century
Didier Fassin, “The Endurance of Critique,” forthcoming in Anthropological Theory
Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern (2014),” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 30 (2), Winter 2004, pp. 225-248.
***Final Paper due (2,000 words) on December 18, 2018 at 11:59PM***
The final paper prompt is on Courseworks in the Files section and attached as Appendix.
Appendix
First Short Paper (1,000 words maximum)
Please write a well-organized and thoughtful essay that puts into conversation two texts we have read (or two authors, if you prefer) on the central question of what is a just society. Please find two authors who do not agree with each other, but instead push each other to develop their strongest argument.
You should think of the essay as an opportunity to develop your strongest argument about just societies using one text that advances that argument and another text that most productively challenges that argument and forces you to sharpen it. The essay should not be in the form of a dialogue, but rather in the form of a well-developed and structured thesis that posits the first view, articulates the strongest and most productive objections, and then responds to those with your best possible argument. The exercise should help you formulate your most powerful argument in support of your thesis about justice and just societies.
Please privilege quality over quantity. Make sure that you have at least five core sections to your essay: an introduction that states your overarching thesis, a section on your first text/author, a section on your second text/author challenging the first, a section resolving the challenges, and a conclusion that points to the interesting implications of your essay or other lingering problems and doubts.
Please do not exceed 1,000 words. This translates into 4 pages, double-spaced, 12-point font. Please submit on Courseworks.
Thank you, and warmest regards, Bernard Harcourt
One-Hour In-Class Mid-Term Examination
The Format of the Mid-Term
The midterm will consist of two (2) parts. Each part will be weighted equally, so 50% each. The mid-term will last one hour.
Part 1 will involve identifying and discussing three passages from our assigned readings. You will receive the passages and need to, first, identify the author and work; and then, second, discuss its significance in relationship to the course. Why is the passage important? What does it say about theories of justice? How does it fit in the debates in the course?
Part 2 will ask you to write a well-organized and thoughtful essay that responds to a question prompt regarding the competing theories of justice we have been discussing throughout the semester.
Second Short Paper (1,000 words maximum)
Please write a well-organized and thoughtful essay that relates one of the forms of political intervention that we have studied in Part IV of the course to the theories of justice that we studied in Part I. The essays should be based on a close examination of a political practice and a close reading of one or more texts on theories of justice.
Please develop your own theory, well argued, for how political practices should or do relate to theories of justice. Be creative, and push yourself to develop a thesis that matters to you and possibly to others.
Please privilege quality over quantity. Make sure that you have at least five core sections to your essay: an introduction that states your overarching thesis, a section on the practice you are investigating, a section on the theories of justice you are considering, a section relating the two, and a conclusion that points to the interesting implications of your essay or other lingering problems and doubts.
Please do not exceed 1,000 words. This translates into 4 pages, double-spaced, 12-point font. Please submit on Courseworks.
Thank you, and warmest regards, Bernard E. Harcourt
Final Paper (Word Limit: 2,000 words - 8 pages, double spaced, 12-point font)
For the final paper, please write a well-organized and thoughtful essay that develops, on the basis of our assigned readings and classroom discussion, your own fully theorized position addressing (1) the proper way to think about justice and (2) how that would resolve a current problem of social justice.
You should think of this essay as an opportunity to develop your argument about just societies and to offer an illustration of how it would play out. The essay should offer a well-developed and structured thesis that posits first your conception of justice and second an application in an area that you care about.
Once again, please privilege quality over quantity. Make sure that you have at least four core sections to your essay: an introduction that states your overarching thesis, a section on your theory of justice, a section applying your theory of justice to a social problem, and a conclusion that points to the interesting implications of your essay or other lingering problems and doubts.
Have fun with this essay and please use it as a way for you to formulate your theory of justice. And have a great holiday afterwards!
Warmest regards,
Bernard E. Harcourt