Emergency Politics

Catalog description

This seminar uses political and cultural theory to explore the multiple meanings of "emergency" in a moment of declining empire, impending climate catastrophe, uncontained pandemic, racial uprising and incipient fascism -amidst considerable political uncertainty about how each can be engaged. The course content will change somewhat if Joe Biden wins the Presidency, but our themes remain pressing regardless. For even if Trump does not steal the election by a semi-legal coup, at least 35% of the population seems wed to climate denial, immigrant detention, white supremacy, abortion abolition, and militarized repression. Our basic questions thus remain, first, what is the meaning of "fascism" as a term of analysis and judgment in this moment? Second, if the liberal democratic regime of the last 50 years produced these emergencies, in what senses is it possible or desireable to "return to normal?" In this regard, what basic debates about means and end are dividing progressives about the pandemic, a collapsed economy, systemic racism, rampant sexual violence, and climate catastrophe? Third, can politics address pervasive "de-factualization" and rancorous polarization, while projecting a common horizon? Imagine this seminar, therefore, as an opportunity to think about contestable terms of analysis, trauma in differently positioned constituencies, and our choices in narrativizing it. Possible readings: Paxton, Anatonmy of Fascism; Theweleit, Male Fantasies; Benjamin, Theses on History, Scranton, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene; Melville, "Barteby the Scrivener," Lear, Radical Hope; Moten & Harney, The Undercommons; Atwood, Handmaid's Tale; Shamsie, Homefire; Butler, Parable of the Sower.