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title: Introduction to Contemporary Civilizations in the West, II
author: Professor Manan Ahmed
Date: Spring 2020


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### Course Rationale

How do we understand the texts which produced, and were produced by, inequality, excess, violence and fear? When we speak of the canon of Enlightenment thinkers, those are not the most oft-used categories of understanding that we invoke. Yet, inequality – whether civilizational or theological or racial – and fear – whether of the “other” or of the “modern” – provide the background to the discursive traditions we are going to explore from texts roughly placed 1700-2000 CE.
How do we understand the texts which produced, and were produced by, inequality, excess, violence and fear? When we speak of the canon of Enlightenment thinkers, those are not the most oft-used categories of understanding that we invoke. Yet, inequality – whether civilizational or theological or racial – and fear – whether of the “other” or of the “modern” – provide the background to the discursive traditions we are going to explore from texts roughly placed 1700-2000 CE.

In the previous semester we saw that transmissions across geographies of ideas and peoples, make the notion of the "West" as a hermetically sealed unit untenable. This semester, the rise of mercantile and colonial corporation and the growth of African and Indigenous slave-labor as fuel for northern European economies is the necessary backdrop to the question of tradition and the emergence of the "New".
In the previous semester we saw that transmissions across geographies of ideas and peoples, make the notion of the "West" as a hermetically sealed unit untenable. This semester, the rise of mercantile and colonial corporation and the growth of African and Indigenous slave-labor as fuel for northern European economies is the necessary backdrop to the question of tradition and the emergence of the "New".

This semester will focus on the emergence of disciplinary thought. The texts we read this semester were often foundational in creating or enlarging academic disciplines (alongside political and social systems). We will look at the birth of Philology, History, Anthropology and Natural Sciences as disciplinary knowledges-- and the colonial imperative of such epistemologies. In the second half of the semester we will look at how these epistemologies were then resisted against by the colonized world. Watch this scene from [Black Robe (1991) on colonial epistemologies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoxUto7-sDI). To understand the question of 'barbarism' at play there, recall Bartolomé de Las Casas, *Apologética Historia Sumaria* (c.1552). México: Universidad Autónoma de México, 1967, vol. II, pp. 637–54.

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#### Recommended ADDITIONAL Reading (Theoretical)
* Paul Ricoeur, "What is a Text? Explanation and Understanding" (1981)
* Elizabeth Grosz, "Bodies and Knowledges: Feminism and the Crisis of Reason" (1993)
* Giorgio Agamben, "What is a Paradigm?" (2009)
* Giorgio Agamben, "What is a Paradigm?" (2009)
* Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart, "Collaboration" (2019)

### Assessments

We want to build a community of readers and thinkers in this class - who are able to work collectively and collaboratively. I am setting my assessment goals on two paths: firstly, I want to make sure we are doing close-reading of the texts, and secondly, I want to ensure that we are critical and engaged writers. With those goals, I ask that you do two forms of regular production in the class - short form writing and research oriented presentation.

* **20 points for Participation**: To get the full points, you will attend every single class, and be an active listener to your colleagues, and sometimes, a commenter and facilitator for their ideas and sometimes, a speaker of your own thoughts.
* **20 points for Participation**: To get the full points, you will attend every single class, and be an active listener to your colleagues, and sometimes, a commenter and facilitator for their ideas and sometimes, a speaker of your own thoughts.
* **10 points for RBML Archive Report**: As part of your exposure to the world of CC, you are to visit the RBML at Columbia. Locate and check out a manuscript belonging to/related to one of the authors on our syllabus and write a 1000 word response where you describe the search, the archival object, your analysis of the materiality and content of the archival object.
* **15 points for Presentation on Text/Author**: Every class, one student will deliver a short-presentation on the Text/Author we are reading. The presentation will highlight their biography, their intellectual concerns and contributions, and some recent assessment of their thought in scholarly literature (JSTOR searches limited to past 5 years). This presentation will be posted on Piazza before the class begins. Expect to invest around 10 hours of research, writing and prepration for this presentation. The presentation cannot last more than 15 minutes.
* **25 points for Presentations on Context/Time**: Every class, one student will deliver a short-presentation on the context for the Text/Author we are reading. This context will comprise of 10 headlines (only) selected from newspapers contemporary to the Text/Author. You can use the Historical Newspaper databases on Clio. This presentation will be posted on Piazza before the class begins. Expect to invest around 15 hours of research, writing and prepration for this presentation. The presentation cannot last more than 15 minutes.
* **25 points for Discussion on CW**: For your comment/discussions on the CW posts of your colleagues after the class.
* **5 points for a final reflection paper on Climate disaster**: All semester we have been talking about the history of the birth of academic disciplines. We are now undergoing the end of a human habitable planet. In your final reflection paper, drawing upon the theories you have encountered, I ask you to write 1500 words on the how you perceive the crisis of a over-heated planet can be approached from a disciplinary perspective (any of the disciplines we studied or your own majors).
* **25 points for Discussion on CW**: For your comment/discussions on the CW posts of your colleagues after the class.
* **5 points for a final reflection paper on Climate disaster**: All semester we have been talking about the history of the birth of academic disciplines. We are now undergoing the end of a human habitable planet. In your final reflection paper, drawing upon the theories you have encountered, I ask you to write 1500 words on the how you perceive the crisis of a over-heated planet can be approached from a disciplinary perspective (any of the disciplines we studied or your own majors).


### Participation

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* Tuesday, January 21, 2020
- Introductions + Break Essay discussion

* Thursday, January 23, 2020
- Francis Bacon, "A Specimen of the Persian Magick," 1606 (CW) 
- John Locke, "The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina" (1669) (CW)
Expand All @@ -74,39 +72,39 @@ John Locke (1632-1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Adam Smith (1723-1790
* David Hume, Of National Characters (1748) (CW)
* Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiment (1759): Part V (CW)
* Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776): Book 1 (Chp 1-4), Book 3 (Chp 1), Book 4 (Chp 6, 7) (CW)

* Thursday, January 30, 2020
* Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785): Preface, First Section (CW)
* Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798): 149-224 (CW)

* Tuesday, February 4, 2020
* Edmund Burke, Speech in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788) (CW)

* Thursday, February 6, 2020
* Olympe de Gouges- Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (Declaration of Rights of Women and the Female Citizen), 1791 (CW)
* Haitian Declaration of Independence, 1804 (CW)
* The Constitution of Haiti, 1805 (CW)

* Tuesday, February 11, 2020
* W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte (Lectures on the Philosophy of History) (1821-31): Chapters: Geographic Basis of History, Part I: The Oriental World (China, India, Persia), Part IV: The German World (Mohamatanism, Art and Science as Putting a Period to the Middle Ages, The Éclaircissement and Revolution) (CW)

* Thursday, February 13, 2020
* Thomas Babington Macaulay, Government of India, 1833 (CW)
* Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon; or the Inspection-House: containing the Idea of a New Principle of Construction applicable to any sort of Establishment, in which Persons of any Description are to be kept under Inspection, 1838 (CW)

* Tuesday, February 18, 2020
* Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique (Democracy in America), 1835-40: Vol 1: Part 1, Chp 3-4, Part 2, Chp 7,8,9,10; Vol 2: Part 1: Chp 1; Chp 3; Part 2, Chp 12; Part 4, Chp: 2, 3, 4 (CW)
* Beaumont & Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States, 1833. Selections (CW)

* Thursday, February 20, 2020
* Charles Darwin, Origins of Species, 1859: Chapter IV (CW)
* Charles Darwin, Letter to Walter Elliot (23 Jan 1856) http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-1824 (CW)
* Charles Darwin, Selections from The Beagle Diary, 1839  (CW)

* Tuesday, February 25, 2020
* John Stewart Mill, The Petition of the East India Company, 1858 (CW)
* John Stewart Mill, On Liberty, 1859 (CW)

* Thursday, February 27, 2020
* Herbert Spencer, Social Organism, 1860 (CW)
* Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences, 1869 (CW)
Expand All @@ -124,33 +122,33 @@ John Locke (1632-1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Adam Smith (1723-1790
* W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903: Chapter 1, 2, 3, 9, 14
* W. E. B. Du Bois, "Of the Culture of White Folks", 1917. (CW)
* W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Disenfranchised Colonies," 1945 (CW)

* Thursday, March 12, 2020
* Rosa Luxemburg, Massenstreik, Partei und Gewerkschaften (Mass Strike, The Party and the Trade Union), 1906 (CW)
* Rosa Luxemburg, Letters (Selections) (CW)

* Tuesday, March 24, 2020
* Mohandas K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, 1909: Section 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17

* Thursday, March 26, 2020
* Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, 1913. (CW)

* Tuesday, March 31, 2020
* V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916 (CW)

* Thursday, April 2, 2020
* Walter Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschichte (Thesis on the Concept of History), 1940 (CW)

* Tuesday, April 7, 2020
* Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe (Second Sex), 1949: Introduction, Part 1, chp 3, Part 2, chp 5, and Conclusion (CW)

* Thursday, April 9, 2020
* Aimé Césaire, Poetry and Knowldege, 1944.
* Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme (Discourse on Colonalism), 1950.

* Tuesday, April 14, 2020
* Hannah Arendt, Imperialism: The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1958: Chapters, Race-Thinking Before Racism, Race and Bureaucracy and The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man

* Thursday, April 16, 2020
* Franz Fanon, Les Damnés de la Terre (The Wretched of the Earth), 1961: chapter 1 and Conclusion.
* Declaration on the Right to Insubordination in the War in Algeria (The Manifesto of the 121), 1960 (CW)
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* The Combahee River Collective Statement (1974)
* Hortense Spillers, Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book (1987)
* Sylvia Wynter, "‘No Humans Involved’: An open letter to my colleagues" (1992).

* Tuesday, April 28, 2020
* Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier. “On the Temperatures of the Terrestrial Sphere and Interplanetary Space, 1824.
* S. Callendar, “The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and its Influence on Temperature,”1938.
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