AAAS 24.50 Contemporary Black Political Thought and the Modern World
In the era and “return” of mass political social movements, the question is perhaps not what is the most urgent political struggle of today; rather, what remains unheard, unseen, and unthought in the struggle for political freedom? This course seeks to familiarize students with the works of contemporary black political thinkers who have contributed to the rich theoretical developments and productive tensions in Black Studies, discourses on black resistance and freedom struggle, and political action itself. The course focuses on several key concepts—such as civic and social death, sovereignty, the collective unconscious, the radical imagination—as a way to examine notions of agency and the psychic life of racial violence, particularly in the context of the United States. What is the dream-work of Black freedom? And how do dreams of (black) freedom become realized and/or barred from larger socio-political, economic, and legal structures to the more abstract registers of language, aesthetics, culture, and the imagination? The course investigates the theoretical tenets within contemporary Black Studies as critical theory, arguing that these are equally contributive to the continental philosophical tradition on questions of life, rights, civil society, and personhood.