Disobedience: Law, Literature, and Tragedy

Catalog description

Disobedience: rebellion, revolution, resistance, insurgency, insurrection, anarchism, conscientious objection, civil disobedience, naughtiness, waywardness, defiance, rudeness, insubordination. This seminar will examine the relationship between disobedience and political authority by engaging with a range of texts in literature, philosophy, politics, law, and the arts. Do we have an obligation to obey the laws of the state we belong to? If yes, then why? Will the absence of such obligation lead to chaos and violence? When is disobedience of authority morally justified? Can disobedience of authority be legally justified? What is the difference between violent and nonviolent disobedience? Faced with an ecological crisis on a planetary scale, how can we re-imagine collective action in the face of persistent inaction? We will probe such questions by reading and discussing the work of novelists, poets, critical theorists, philosophers, jurists, anticolonial thinkers, anarchists, hacktivists, and climate-change activists. The course will begin with classical texts such as by Sophocles, Plato, and the Bible. It will go on to read important twentieth century texts and thinkers, including Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Hannah Arendt, and W.E.B. Du Bois, and end with contemporary debates on the place of disobedience in radical politics.