cc2.md

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

Colonial and Anti-Colonial Epistemologies

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.

In the previous semester we focused on the idea of "origins". 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 ordering of the world.

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.

To Be Read during the Break

Please read these short essays over the break. Our first class will be a discussion of these essays. They are available in CW/Files&Resources.

• Documentary (on Amazon Prime): Concerning Violence (2014) directed by Göran Olsson
• Kristie Dotson "On the way to decolonization in a settler colony: Re-introducing Black feminist identity politics” (AlterNative, 2018)
• Achille Mbembe, "Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the Archive" (2015)

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)
• Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart, "Collaboration" (2019)

Land Acknowledgment

As members of Columbia’s Morningside campus, we acknowledge that those of us located in Manhattan are on the territory of the Lenape and Wappinger peoples. Indigenous people from many nations live and work in this region today. Some of us are in other parts of the American subcontinent. Many indigenous communities have lived in and moved through this place over time. I ask you to research the indigenous histories of your land and share it with our class. Our digital infrastructure is also grounded in the same theft of land and resources under colonialism. We acknowledge and pay respect to the native elders past and present, and recognize their active presence and their futurity, reposed in the generations present and those to come.

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.
• 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).

Participation

Attendance and participation is required. Class participation requires your active participation. Some basic rules: come to class on time, do not disrupt the class, put your phones on silent, turn off all computing devices. As a discussion seminar, this course survives only if you come to every class, and participate by doing the readings, listening and commenting in class, turning in the assignment and seeing me during my office hours. Discussion means attentive and respectful listening, short and timely speaking, and creating a cordial and warm atmosphere wherein all are invited to test their ideas and impressions. Please read everything before class. Take notes in the margins of the text; underline key sentences and paragraphs, annotate; write out what feels extraordinary, questionable, pleasant, or remarkable (and remark it out loud in class).

Please Note the Core Policy on Student Attendance:

“Students are expected to attend every session of their Core classes. Students who miss class without instructor permission should expect to have their grade lowered. Repeated unexcused absences will result in a failing grade or a withdrawal from the class. In the event that a student must miss a class due to religious observance, illness, or family emergency, instructors may strongly encourage (though not require) that students complete additional assignments to help make up for lost class participation. Whenever possible (in the case of religious holidays, for example), students should provide advance notification of absence.

Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty Policy:

Columbia College is dedicated to the highest ideals of integrity in academia. Therefore, in Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization, any instance of academic dishonesty, attempted or actual, will be reported to the faculty chair of the course and to the dean of the Core Curriculum, who will review the case with the expectation that a student guilty of academic dishonesty will receive the grade of “F” in the course and be referred to dean’s discipline for further institutional action.

The Authors:

John Locke (1632-1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Adam Smith (1723-1790), Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793), G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), Charles Darwin (1809-1882), John Stewart Mill (1806-1873), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903),  Karl Marx (1818-1883), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948), Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Sylvia Wynter (b. 1928), Hortense Spillers (b. 1942). The gender and racial disparity is reflective of the Core's set syllabus. However, we will approach the authors and their works from feminist, deconstructive, and subaltern perspectives.

COURSE SCHEDULE

• Wednesday, January 19

  • Catching up
  • Discussion of the Break Essays

• Monday, January 24

  • David Hume, Of National Characters (1748) and Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences (1742)
  • Jean Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, 1755

• Wednesday, January 26

  • Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiment (1759): Part V
  • 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)

• Monday, January 31

  • Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785): Preface, First Section
  • Immanuel Kant, "Of the Different Human Races" (1777)
  • Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798): 204-238

• Wednesday, February 2

  • Olympe de Gouges, Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (Declaration of Rights of Women and the Female Citizen), 1791
  • Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, (1792)

• Monday, February 7

  • Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, [chp 1] 1789
  • Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon; Or, The Inspection House, 1791
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myal-NSlIGA

• Wednesday, February 9

  • Haitian Declaration of Independence, 1804
  • The Constitution of Haiti, 1805

• Monday, February 14

  • 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)

  • Wednesday, February 16

  • Thomas Babington Macaulay, Government of India, 1833

  • Thomas Babington Macaulay, Minutes on Education, 1835

• Monday, February 21

  • 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, 3; Part 2, Chp 12; Part 4, Chp: 3, 4
  • Beaumont & Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States, 1833. Selections

• Wednesday, February 23

  • Proclamation by Queen Victoria, 1858
  • Proclamation by Queen of Awadh, 1858
  • Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?", 1851 & 1863

• Monday, February 28

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

• Wednesday, March 2

  • John Stewart Mill, The Petition of the East India Company, 1858
  • John Stewart Mill, On Liberty, 1859
  • Mill, “On the Negro Question,” 1849

• Monday, March 7

  • Karl Marx, Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Capital: Critique of Political Economy), 1867: Vol 1, Part 1: Chapter 1 and Part 2: Chapter 4
  • Karl Marx, "British Rule in India" and "Indian Question," 1857,

• Wednesday, March 9

  • Herbert Spencer, Social Organism, 1860
  • Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences, 1869

• Monday, March 21

  • 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.
  • Berlin Conference 1885
  • W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Disenfranchised Colonies," 1945

• Wednesday, March 23

  • Rosa Luxemburg, Massenstreik, Partei und Gewerkschaften (Mass Strike, The Party and the Trade Union), 1906
  • Rosa Luxemburg, Letters (1-27)

• Monday, March 28

  • Mohandas K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, 1909: FULL Section 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17

• Wednesday, March 30

  • Ambedkar, B. R. Annihilation of Caste, 1936

• Monday, April 4

  • Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe (Second Sex), 1949: Introduction, Part 1, chp 3, Part 2, chp 5, and Conclusion

• Wednesday, April 6

  • Suzanne Césaire, "The Great Camouflage," 1943
  • Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme (Discourse on Colonalism), 1950.

• Monday, April 11

  • 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

• Wednesday, April 13

  • 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

• Monday, April 18

  • https://soundcloud.com/patty-wbk/the-structure-of-racism (Links to an external site.) Kim TallBear Podcast
  • Michel Foucault, Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la prison (Discipline and Punish), 1975: Part 1, chp 1; Part 3, chp 3; part 4, chp 3

• Wednesday, April 20

  • 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).

• Monday, April 25

  • Charles Mills, Racial Contract (1997)
  • Saadiya Hartman “Venus in Two Acts” (2008)

• Wednesday, April 27

  • Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses” (2009)
  • Kyle Powys Whyte, “Is it Colonial Déjà Vu? Indigenous Peoples and Climate Injustice” In Humanities for the Environment: Integrating Knowledges, Forging New Constellations of Practice. Edited by J. Adamson, M. Davis, and H. Huang, pgs. 88-104 (2017)

• Monday, May 2

  • Conclusions