Theory of the Subject

Catalog description

This seminar explores the concept of the subject in modern thought, interrogating its development since Nietzsche and its centrality to contemporary theory. We will examine theories of the subject from literary, genealogical, psychoanalytic, and political perspectives, focusing on post-1968 debates. Central to the seminar is understanding how the figure of the subject has shaped modernity and its ongoing crisis in thought today. Students will engage with key thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud, Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, and others, exploring themes like political subjectivity, aesthetics, religion, and the literary. Our discussions will focus on the subject's historical evolution as a concept, its relation to social and political structures, its connection to truth and authenticity, and its engagement with its others-unconscious, the death drive, and the 'others' of Eurocentric modernity.