Readings

The table below lists the readings due each class, with online versions when available.

SES # TOPICS ASSIGNED READINGS
1 Is There French Theory in This Class?

Foucault, Michel. "This is Not a Pipe." Les Cahiers du chemin, n°2 (1968): 79–195.

Magritte, René. "Les deux mystères." Painting, 1966.

LEAVING REPRESSIVE SOCIETY
2 Judging the War, Rebuilding a Nation

Kaplan, Alice. "Justice in Hindsight." Chapter 13 in The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach. University of Chicago Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780226424156.

Camus, Albert, and Arthur Koestler. "Reflection on the Guillotine." Extract from Réflexions sur la peine Capitale. Calmann-Lévy, 1957.

3 The Genesis of May 1968

Sartre, Jean-Paul. "Existentialism is a Humanism." Text from a lecture given in 1946.

Debord, Guy-Ernest. "Separation Perfected." Chapter 1 from The Society of the Spectacle. Black & Red, 2000. ISBN: 9780934868075.

Movie: Pierrot le Fou. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. 110 min. 1965.

4 Revolution and its Outsiders: Women, Migrants, Sexual Minorities

Deleuze, Gilles. Anti-Oedipus. Continuum, 2004, pp. 380–5. ISBN: 9780826476951. [Preview with Google Books]

Foucault, Michel, and R. Hurley. "Part Four: The Deployment of Sexuality. Chapter 2: Method." In The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. Viking, 1979, pp. 92–102. ISBN: 9780713910940.

5 The Capitalist Machine: Society as Prison

Foucault, Michel. "Part Three: Discipline. Chapter 3: Panopticism." In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Vintage books, 1995, pp. 195–228. ISBN: 9780679752554.

Movie: Un prophète. Directed by Jacques Audiard. 150 min. 2009.

CULTURAL TASTE, NATIONAL IDENTITY
6–7 Cultural Mythologies

Barthes, Roland. "The Great Family of Man," and "Myth Today." Extracts from Mythologies. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972, pp. 100–2 and 109–12. ISBN: 9780374521509.

Visit: Museum of Fine Arts

7 The Idea of Europe Discussion with Professor Helen Drake, Loughborough University Schuman, Robert. "Declaration May 9, 1950."
8 "Parlez-vous français?" The New Politics of Language

Lacan, Jacques. Extract (on the language of self) from Écrits: A Selection. Routledge, 2007, pp. 96–7. ISBN: 9780415255462.

Lyotard, Jean-François. "The Nature of the Social Bond: The Postmodern Perspective." Chapter 5 in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. University Of Minnesota Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780816611737.

9 Social Distinction

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Harvard University Press, 1984, pp. 1–7. ISBN: 9780674212770. [Preview with Google Books]

Movie: Le goût des autres. Directed by Agnès Jaoui. 112 minutes. 2000.

BEYOND LIBERATION
10 Feminist and LGBT Politics: the Ethics of Ambiguities

de Beauvoir, Simone. "Biological Data." Chapter 1 in The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. Vintage, 2011, pp. 21–4. ISBN: 9780307277787.

Eribon, Didier. Insult and the Making of the Gay Self. Translated by Michael Lucey. Duke University Press, 2004, pp. 130–40. ISBN: 9780822333715. [Preview with Google Books]

11 Communities and Anticommunitarianism

Blanchot, Maurice. The Unavowable Community. Translated by Pierre Joris. Station Hill Press, 1988, pp. 9–12, 24–6 and 54–7. ISBN: 9781581771046.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, pp. 4–7, 110–3, and 140–3. ISBN: 9780801858307. [Preview with Google Books]

12 Postcolonial France

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Richard Philcox. Grove Press, 2008, pp. 89–99. ISBN: 9780802143006. [Preview with Google Books]

Movie: L’Esquive. Directed by Abdel Kechiche. 117 minutes. 2003.

13 Video Project Presentations