Global Theory?

Catalog description

What does it mean to make and read theory that is truly global? After decades of heightened global circulation, thinking theory and the global together still poses challenges. While we are rightly suspicious of theories that claim universality, theoretical work has to find new positionalities: ways of being attentive to cultural and contextual specificities while also offering insights on a more global scale. In this course we will approach the problem of global theory from different vantage points: We will scrutinize some key theoretical texts (of so-called Western theory) for their cultural and contextual politics and will put these in dialogue with theories of the global and globalization on the one hand and theories that position themselves (at least partly) outside of Western theoretical traditions. In a final movement, we will read relevant recent theoretical texts to sketch what the future of global theory might look like.