Transindividuality

This class will explore conceptions of political community that disrupt and exceed the individual / collective binary. It will think in the first instance with certain genealogies of French philosophy that implicitly or explicitly posit the transindividual: Etienne Balibar’s reading of Spinoza; a poststructuralist genealogy of political community from Maurice Blanchot to Jean-Luc Nancy to Jacques Derrida; Gilbert Simondon. These will be juxtaposed to readings of Global Southern instantiations of transindividual ideals as foundational investments in postcolonial imaginings of political community: specifically the use of Ubuntu in post apartheid South African political philosophy, and the importance of fraternity in the philosophy of B.R. Ambedkar. The attempt is to think through the kinds of aporias and possibilities of such relational ideas of the political present, in relation to questions of socioeconomic emancipation and democratic promise. 

Undergrad consent is required. 

ANTH 30501 | CCCT 30501