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Self-perception
and institutional sustenance
Level: Master, 7 ECTS
Period: 1st semester
Two-hour seminar, once a week, for 15
weeks
Oral examination and paper
Objective of the course: Students should
be able to present a comprehensive overview of the essential relations
beteen institutional and personal life, inclusing topics such as public
vs private and state vs civil society.
Admission: completed BA in philosophy,
or permission from departmental examinations committee.
Registration: not necessary (at first
class meeting)
Contact: Gijs van Oenen (H5-27; 4088999;
vanoenen@fwb.eur.nl)
Recently there has been much debate about the ‘crisis of the Rechtsstaat’: the supposed desintegration of shared understandings concerning the rule of law and its implications for the self-understanding of citizens. Members of a state, or legal community, function in different capacities: as private persons, as market actors, as citizens in the public sphere, and as legal subjects of the state. Although, from the point of view of social theory and social philosophy, these roles, or capacities, can and should be separated, it should be recognized that they have become thoroughly intertwined and ‘interactive’. Market functioning, or more broadly economics, plays an important role in political argument. And conversely, market functioning is enabled and sustained by structures and understandings embedded in political and legal institutions.
This course aims to analyse the self-understanding of modern subjects in terms of their belonging or functioning in institutions such as the family, the market, the public sphere, the Rechtsstaat, and politics. Why do people perceive the Rechtsstaat to be in crisis? Who is to blame for the apparent decline of the public sphere: indecisive government, lax law enforcement officials, or overassertive citizens? Does the public sphere fall victim to the private wealth, public poverty tendency of late modern societies? What institutions can be relied on to remedy the defects of such societies? For instance: supervisory bodies, regulatory agents, independent councils? Or would this rather exacerbate the problem and scatter responsibility even further?
Course
schedule
5/9 Introduction
12/9 Michel Maffesoli, 'The
return of the tragic in postmodern societies.' In: New Literary
History, 2004, 35, p. 133-149.
Christoph Deutschmann,
‘The promise
of absolute wealth: capitalism as a religion?’. In: Thesis
Eleven, 66, August 2001, p. 32-56.
19/9 Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid modernity.
London: Polity press 2000,
ch1: Emancipation, 16-52;
26/9 Abram de Swaan, The
management of normality. London: Routledge 1990. Ch7: The politics of
agoraphobia:
on changes in emotional and relational management, p. 139-167
3/10 Robert Lane, The market
experience. Cambridge university press 1991. Ch10: Markets and
self-esteem, p.
181-206; ch16: Giving work priority over consumption, 314-338; ch.17:
Maximizing pay: costs and consequences, 339-363
10/10 Marshall Berman, All that is solid melts into
air. The experience
of modernity. New York: Simon & Schuster 1982. Part III:
Baudelaire: modernism
in the streets, p. 131-171
17/10
David Garland, The culture of
control. Oxford university press 2001. Ch.5: Policy predicament:
adaptation,
denial, and acting out, p. 102-138, and ch.7: The new culture of crime
control,
p. 167-192
31/10 Richard Sennett, The
corrosion of character. New York: W.W. Norton 1998. Preface, Ch.1:
Drift, and
ch.2: Routine, p. 9-45
7/11 Richard Sennett, The
corrosion of character. Ch3: Flexible, ch.4: Illegible, ch.5: Risk, p.
46-98
14/11 Richard Sennett, The
corrosion of character. Ch.6: The work ethic, ch.7: failure, ch.8: The
dangerous pronoun, p. 98-148
21/11 Gijs van Oenen, A machine
that would run of itself. Interpassivty and its impact on political
life. In:
Theory & Event, 9/2, 2006.
28/11 Richard Sennett, The
culture of the new capitalism. Yale university press 2006, ch1:
Bureaucracy, p.
15-82
5/12 Richard Sennett, The
culture of the new capitalism, ch.2: Talent and the specter of
uselessness, p.
83-130
Last change:
October 24,
2006
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