Modernity and Postmodernity: Issues and Ideas
GEL Literature, GEL Global Diversity
Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:45-2:05, Baker Systems 260
Franco Barchiesi
How have ideas of human sovereignty and freedom shaped modern thought and global realities?
How do modern ideas relate to the structures of capitalism and the power of nation-states?
How is modern humanity defined by the violence of racial enslavement, settler colonialism, and indigenous genocide?
How effective are theories of postcolonialism and postmodernity as critiques of the violence of modernity?
The course will address these important questions by introducing theories and debates defining discourses of modernity and postmodernity. Through weekly class discussions based on lectures, readings, and films, we will analyze the meaning of the (post)modern global reality in relation to how it differently manifests itself across societies and cultures.
We will also look at that difference problematically, as it is not necessarily geared at inclusion within an embracing humanity but is underpinned by forms of exclusion and domination with deep structural roots.
In our discussions we will address key aspects and concepts in debates about modernity and its critique, including the ways in which modernity is haunted by the “afterlife of slavery” and its manifestations in contemporary anti-blackness; race, class, and gender in relation to contemporary capitalism; how ideas of sovereignty are enmeshed in theories of the modern subject; in what ways migration and mobility are the results of colonialism; the possibilities and limitations of performance and media as forms of agency; the meaning of “resistance” in the context of the “Anthropocene” and threatened global extinction.
