History 1324: French Social Thought From Durkheim to Foucault Prof. Peter E. Gordon Department of History Harvard University Spring Semester, 2015 Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:30-1pm. Sever Hall 103 Professor Gordon s Office Hours: Thursdays, 2-4 p.m. The Center for European Studies, Room 305 pgordon@fas.harvard.edu Course Teaching Fellow: Brandon Bloch: bloch@fas.harvard.edu Brandon Bloch s Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2-4 p.m., Robinson Hall Lobby Course Description This course introduces students to the major themes of French social theory in the twentieth century, from the sociological writings of Émile Durkheim to the rise of a post-marxist theory of democracy. The course is designed to provide students with a lucid but rigorous grounding in the predominant schools and movements that have animated French intellectual life over the past century. Although this course is classified as a lecture course in intellectual history, the very identity of the course as historical should be taken with a grain of salt. As students alive to the interdisciplinary character of these movements, we will not confine ourselves to any one mode of analysis but will instead borrow freely from all disciplines as the subject requires, from sociology and philosophy, history and political theory, tracing out the major lines of argument and dispute that have preoccupied some of the greatest theorists in the French intellectual tradition. The course is organized into five thematic units, as follows: 1, the French sociological tradition; 2, the challenge of French existentialism; 3, the emergence of structuralism; 4, the genesis of post-structuralism; and 5, power, distinction, democracy. Major readings are by the following authors: Durkheim, Lévi-Strauss, Kojève, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, Fanon, Foucault, Althusser, Derrida, Barthes, Bourdieu, and Lefort. Course Requirements The course readings are typically of moderate length but they will require lively critical engagement: they cannot be read casually or at spare moments. Students will be expected to attend all lectures and sections, and they will also be expected to participate actively in section discussion. The basic requirements are as follows: Full attendance of all lectures and weekly sections Active participation in weekly sections; five brief response papers (turned in to your TF) Three paper assignments, to be turned in at the specified times as indicated below Grading Policy The course-grade as determined at the end of the semester breaks down into the following components with percentages as indicated: Section participation: 30% Paper 1 (5-7pp.) 20% Paper 2 (7-9pp.) 25% Paper 3 (7-9pp.) 25% Please note that attendance at all lectures and sections is a requirement. If you must miss a section, please be certain to notify your TF in advance to explain the reason for your absence. Late papers without prior clearance with the TF will be marked down at the TF s discretion.
Books Available for Purchase The following books are available for purchase from the Harvard Coop. ISBN information is provided here for students who prefer to comparison-shop. Shorter selections will be available for downloading as pdfs on the password-protected course website: Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (trans. Lewis Coser) (Free Press, 1997); ISBN-10: 0684836386; ISBN-13: 978-0684836386 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Oxford University Press, 2008) USA, abridged edition; ISBN-10: 0199540128; ISBN-13: 978-0199540129 Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (Norton, 2000); ISBN: 9780393320435 Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (New Directions, 1969); ISBN: 0811201880 Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (University Of Chicago, 1968); ISBN-10: 0226474844; ISBN-13: 978-0226474847 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (Vintage, 1988); ISBN-10: 067972110X; ISBN-13: 978-0679721109 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. I, An Introduction (Vintage, 1990); ISBN-10: 0679724699; ISBN-13: 978-0679724698 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (Vintage,1994); ISBN-10: 0679753354; ISBN-13: 978-0679753353
Course Syllabus PART I THE FRENCH SOCIOLOGICAL TRADITION Lecture 1: Tues., 27 Jan. Introduction: French Social Thought from Positivism to the Symbolic readings: none Lecture 2: Thurs., 29 Jan. Durkheim and Society as an Object Émile Durkheim, What is a Social Fact? and Rules for the Observation of Social Facts, from The Rules of Sociological Method. (1895). Lecture 3: Tues, 3 Feb. Durkheim on the Promise and Pathology of Modern Society Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Modern Society (1893), selections, as follows: Introduction, and Chs.1, 2, and 3. Durkheim, Suicide (1897), selections, as follows: Preface, Introduction, and Anomic Suicide. Lecture 4: Thurs., 5 Feb. Durkheim and the Rise of the Symbolic Durkheim, The Elementary Frameworks of Religious Life (1912), selections, as follows: Introduction, and Book 1, ch.1, A Definition of the Religious Phenomenon and of Religion ; Book 1, ch.4, Totemism as an Elementary Religion ; Book 2, ch.1, Central Totemic Beliefs: The Totem as Name and Emblem ; Book 2, ch.3, Central Totemic Beliefs The Cosmological System of Totemism and the Notion of Genus ; Book 2, ch.6, The Origins of these Beliefs The Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana, and the Idea of Force ; Book 2, ch.7, The Origins of these Beliefs The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana, and Conclusion. Lecture 5: Tues., 10 Feb. Durkheim on Metaphysics, Ideology, and Social Solidarity Durkheim, Individualism and the Intellectuals (1898), and The Dualism of Human Nature and its Social Conditions. (1914) Lecture 6: Thurs., 12 Feb. French Social Thought after Durkheim: The Reproduction of Social Solidarity Marcel Mauss, The Gift (1924), pp.1-83, (all). PART II THE CHALLENGE OF FRENCH EXISTENTIALISM Lecture 7: Tues., 17 Feb. Jean-Paul Sartre and the Origins of Existentialism Sartre, Nausea (1938), all. Lecture 8: Alexandre Kojève and the Origins of Existential Marxism Thurs., 19 Feb. Kojève, In Place of an Introduction in Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. (1947) Lecture 9: Tues., 24 Feb. Jean-Paul Sartre and the Tasks of Existential Phenomenology Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943), selections, as follows: The Origin of Negation ; The Look, Quality as a Revelation of Being and Conclusion. Lecture 10: Jean-Paul Sartre and the Burdens of Freedom Thurs., 26 Feb. Sartre, The Humanism of Existentialism. (1946) First Paper Due, Monday, 2 nd March, 4pm.
Lecture 11: Existentialism and Alterity: Beauvoir and Fanon Tues., 3 Mar. Simone de Beauvoir, Introduction to The Second Sex. (1949) Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952): Chs. 6, 7, and 8. Sartre, Preface to Fanon s The Wretched of the Earth. (1963) Fanon, Conclusion to The Wretched of the Earth. (1963) Lecture 12: Existentialism, Humanism, Marxism Thurs., 5 Mar. Martin Heidegger, Letter on Humanism. (1947) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Freedom from The Phenomenology of Perception. (1945) PART III THE EMERGENCE OF STRUCTURALISM Lecture 13: Tues., 10 Mar. The Origins of French Structuralism Ferdinand de Saussure, Course on General Linguistics (1915), selections, as follows: Part One, Chs. I-III; and Part Two, Chs. I-VIII. Lecture 14: Thurs., 12 Mar. Foundations of French Structuralist Anthropology Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), selections, as follows: Ch. 1, Nature and Culture and Ch. 2, The Problem of Incest. Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (1955), selections, as follows: 1: Setting Out, 28: A Writing Lesson, and 38: A Little Glass of Rum. Spring Recess, from Saturday 14th March through Sunday 22nd March Lecture 15: Tues., 24 Mar. Lévi-Strauss: Culture as a Symbolic System Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (1962), selections, as follows: Preface; Ch. 1 The Science of the Concrete ; Ch. 2, The Logic of Totemic Classifications ; Ch. 4, Totem and Caste ; and Ch. 9, History and Dialectic. Lecture 16: Thurs., 26 Mar. From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked (1964), Overture. Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences. (1966) PART IV THE GENESIS OF POST-STRUCTURALISM Lecture 17: Tues,. 31 Mar. Foucault: Reason and Unreason as a Symbolic System Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (1961), selections, as follows: Ch. I, Stultifera Navis ; Ch. II, The Great Confinement ; Ch. VII, The Great Fear ; Ch. VIII, The New Division ; Ch. IX, The Birth of the Asylum, and Conclusion Lecture 18: Foucault/Derrida: The Internal Critique of Structuralism Thurs., 2 Apr Derrida, Cogito and the History of Madness. (1967) Second Paper Due, Monday, 6 th April, 4pm.
Lecture 19: Tues., 7 Apr. Foucault: Structuralism and the Historicity of the A Priori Foucault, The Order of Things (1966), selections, as follows: Preface ; Ch. 3, Representing ; Ch. 7, The Limits of Representation ; Ch. 9, section VIII only The Anthropological Sleep ; and Ch. 10, The Human Sciences. Lecture 20: The Philosophy of May 68: Anti-Humanism and Emancipation Thurs., 9 Apr. Derrida, The Ends of Man. (1968) Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author. (1968) Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. (1970) Lecture 21: Tues., 14 Apr. Foucault: Social Order and the Critique of Modern Surveillance Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1975), selections, as follows: Part One, Ch. 1, The Body of the Condemned ; Part Three, Ch. 3, Panopticism ; and Part Four, Ch. 3, The Carceral. Lecture 22: Jacques Lacan: Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolic Thurs., 16 Apr. Lacan, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I. (1949; 1966) PART V POWER, DISTINCTION, DEMOCRACY Lecture 23: Tues., 21 Apr. The Will to Knowledge and the Invention of the Soul Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. I (1976), all. Lecture 24: Pierre Bourdieu: Power, Culture, and the Habitus Thurs., 23 Apr. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1979) selections, as follows: Introduction ; Ch. 1, The Aristocracy of Culture (pp.10-56 only); and Ch. 3, The Habitus and the Space of Life-Styles (pp.169-175 only). Lecture 25: The End of Revolution and the Rebirth of Liberalism Tues., 28 Apr. Claude Lefort, The Question of Democracy. (1983) Please note: There will be required sections during the week of April 27-May 1 st. 29 th April: Last Day of Spring Term 30 th April 6 th May: Reading Period Final Paper Due 6 th May, 4pm