Thurner/HIS6445/2013

HIS 6445 Postcolonial Theories Dr. Mark Thurner Department of History University of Florida Spring 2013 HIS 6445 is concerned with the historical emergence of post-structural, postcolonial, and subaltern critical thought. As a graduate seminar, we will be concerned with the practical implications of this heterogeneous body of critical thought for our own work. Required textbooks There are eight (8) required books and several articles, as follows: 1) Edward Said, Orientalism, (Vintage, 1979; or second, Penguin, 2003). 2) Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Spivak, (Johns Hopkins, 1998). 3) Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader (ed. Paul Rabinow), (Vintage, 1984). 4) Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies, (Oxford, 1988). 5) Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, (Routledge Classics, 2004). 6) Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, (Princeton, 2000 or 2007). 7) Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony, (California, 2001). 8) Mark Thurner and Andres Guerrero, eds., After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas, (Duke, 2003). On-line digital copies of required articles and chapters will be placed on the UF Libraries Course Reserve webpage for this course. For a list of these articles, marked RSV for Reserve Item, see Topical Outline below. Evaluation of Performance 33% Seminar participation* weekly discussion & critical engagement workshop presentation Reaction papers** 4 (four) critical reviews, one for each unit, 4-6 pages each Final paper** 15-25 page essay on a topic to be selected in consultation with the instructor

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Topical Outline of Seminar Unit 1: Basic Concepts and Approaches: Intellectual History of Crisis The modern concept of crisis Conceptual History versus the History of Ideas What is a concept? What is a sign? The crisis of the Old Regime, or Revolution and Crisis Marxism and Crisis The Crisis of Crisis or post-crisis The prefix post As flag and as double inscription As sign of the Crisis of Crisis Post and modern Post and structuralism Post and colonialism Post and history or historicism Required Readings for Unit 1: RSV Reinhart Koselleck, Some Questions Regarding the Conceptual History of Crisis, in The Practice of Conceptual History, (Stanford, 2002), pp. 237-247. RSV Reinhart Koselleck, Crisis, Consciousness, and Historical Construction (Rousseau, Diderot, Raynal, Paine), in Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society, (MIT, 1989), pp. 158-189. RSV Elias Jose Palti, The Problem of Misplaced Ideas Revisited: Beyond the History of Ideas in Latin America, Journal of the History of Ideas 67:1 (January 2006), pp. 149-179 RSV Elias Jose Palti, Poststructuralist Marxism and the Experience of Disaster. On Alain Badious Theory of the (Non-)Subject, The European Legacy, 8:4 (2003), pp. 459-480. Mark Thurner, After Spanish Rule: Writing Another After, in Thurner and Guerrero, eds., After Spanish Rule, (Duke, 2003), pp. 12-57.

Unit 2: Subaltern Studies Guhas Foundational Gesture Gramsci in translation History on trial Feminism and the Critique of the Subject

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Spivak on Subaltern Studies The crisis of the subaltern subject The Postcolonial Turn Prakash and Chakrabarty Three Fountainheads: Gramsci, Foucault, Derrida Required Readings for Unit 2: Antonio Gramsci, Notes on Italian History, in Selections from the Prison Notebooks, (New York, 1971), pp. 44-120. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies, (Oxford, 1988), with a foreword by Edward Said. Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader (ed. Paul Rabinow), (Vintage, 1984). RSV Gyan Prakash, Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism, American Historical Review, n. 99, v. 5 (December 1994). RSV Dipesh Chakrabarty, A Small History of Subaltern Studies, in Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies, (Chicago, 2002), pp. 3-19.

Unit 3: Postcolonial Studies Said: Orientalism and Colonial Discourse Foucault: French Discourse Derrida: Grammar Lesson Bhabhas Theory of Theory The Proliferation of Anglophone Postcolonial (Literary) Studies Against Postcolonialism Required Readings for Unit 3: Edward Said, Orientalism, (first edition, Vintage, 1979; or second edition, Penguin Modern Classics, 2003). RSV Robert Young, Edward Said and Colonial Discourse, in Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, (Blackwell, 2001), pp. 383-394. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Spivak, (Johns Hopkins, 1998). Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, (Routledge Classics, 2004).

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RSV Simon Gikandi, Poststructuralism and Postcolonial Discourse, in Lazarus, Neil, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies, (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 97-119.

Unit 4: History after Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial Turn Chakrabartys critique of historicism: Europe as History Historical difference and theory South-South conversations Genealogies of empire and nation Postcolonial nations and postnational colonials Required Readings for Unit 4: Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, (Princeton, 2000). Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony, (California, 2001). RSV Frederic Cooper, Postcolonial Studies and the Study of History, in Ania Loomba, et. al., Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, (Duke, 2005), pp. 401-422. Mark Thurner and Andres Guerrero, eds., After Spanish Rule, (Duke, 2003).

Unit 5: Workshop Student Presentations of Working Papers

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