Universal Humanism?

Catalog description

This course is an exploration of the (im)possibilities of universal humanism as a political and ethical aspiration in the 21st century. This exploration centrally stages a conversation between some Western political thought and critical Black studies, though the dialectic extends to include thinking in animal studies, queer and feminist theory, postcolonialism, critical disability studies, Indigenous studies, critical ecology, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, affect theory, and new materialism. We will also think about how literariness — the idea of literacy, the methods of narrative and poetics — contributes to discourses of the human. Some primary interlocutors here will include Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Judith Butler, Lucille Clifton, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Toni Morrison, Hortense Spillers, Patricia Williams, and Sylvia Wynter. In brief, this course asks, can universal humanism be salvaged — and if so, on what grounds?