Philosophy Department

1200 Academy St. Kalamazoo, MI 49006

PHI 540

CONTEMPORARY CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY (PHI 555):

French Post-Structuralism

Spring 1998

11:50 - 1:05 MWF

Professor Ted Toadvine

203 Humphrey House

Course Description

With the decline of existentialism in the Fifties and the death of Merleau-Ponty in 1961, the French philosophical scene was ripe for the rise of a new philosophical movement. The resulting explosion of activity, given such monikers as "postmodernism," "poststructuralism," and "neostructuralism," will be the topic of this course. Our overview will explore the last forty years of French thought as an explicit reaction against existentialism and phenomenology, taking Vincent Descombes' Modern French Philosophy as our guide. After briefly surveying the preceding influence of Kojève, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, we will examine, in sequence, classical structuralism as found in Lévi-Strauss and Lacan; the critique of history developed by Foucault and Althusser; the post-modernism of Lyotard; and Derrida and Deleuze as representatives of the "philosophy of difference." Throughout, we will be seeking to understand the commonality of these disparate thinkers in the enterprise of overcoming metaphysics, in reaction against or simply apart from existentialism and phenomenology, by a radicalized appropriation of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Freud. What, we will ask, are the implications of this "overcoming" for an understanding of history, subjectivity, meaning, and truth? In closing, we will look at two French thinkers whose work is currently making a great impact on Continental thought in the United States but who stand apart from the poststructuralist tendency: Emmanuel Levinas, who has argued that ethics should replace metaphysics as first philosophy, and Luce Irigaray, for whom sexual difference is the most primordial philosophical category.

Requirements

50% five 500-word response papers (10% each)
40% two 1500-word papers, midterm and final (20% each)
10% participation

Five typewritten response papers of at least 500 words will be based on the readings and class discussions, and will be in response to questions distributed in class. The midterm will be a 1500-word typewritten response to questions distributed in advance and will draw on material covered through that point in the course. The final term paper will be a 1500-word typewritten essay examining one of the figures or themes from the course in greater detail. Topics for the final paper must be approved in advance by the instructor. Final papers will be due on the date set for the final exam. Attendence and participation in class discussions is expected. Missing three or more classes will result in a full grade reduction.

Required Texts

Vincent Descombes, Modern French Philosophy (Cambridge UP, 1980).
Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (Pantheon Books, 1984).
Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (U. of Chicago, 1981).
Gilles Deleuze, The Deleuze Reader, ed. Constantin Boundas (Columbia U. Press, 1993).
Luce Irigaray, The Irigaray Reader, ed. Margaret Whitford (Blackwell, 1991).

Reading Packet including selections from Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Althusser, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Levinas.

Tentative Reading Schedule

WEEK 1: Course Mechanics
Descombes, "The Humanization of Nothingness," 1-26.

WEEK 2:     Descombes, "The Humanization of Nothingness," 27-54.
                    Sartre, "The Origin of Negation," Being and Nothingness (packet).
                    Sartre, "The Look," Being and Nothingness (packet).

WEEK 3:     Descombes, "The Human Origin of Truth," 55-74.
                    Merleau-Ponty, "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence," Signs (packet).
                    Merleau-Ponty, "Man and Adversity," Signs (packet).

WEEK 4:     Descombes, "Semiology," 75-109.
                    Lévi-Strauss, "Language and the Analysis of Social Laws," Structural Anthropology (packet).
                    Lévi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth," Structural Anthropology (packet).
                    Lacan, "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since Freud," Écrits (packet)

WEEK 5:     Descombes, "The Critique of History," 110-135.
                    Althusser, "On the Materialist Dialectic," For Marx (packet).
                    Foucault, "Truth and Power," 51-76.
                    Foucault, "The Great Confinement" & "The Birth of the Asylum," 124-167.

WEEK 6:     Descombes, "Difference," 136-167
                    Derrida, "Implications," 1-14.
                    Derrida, "Positions," 37-96.

WEEK 7:     Boundas, Editor's Introduction to The Deleuze Reader, 1-23
                    Deleuze, "Rhizome Versus Trees," 27-36.
                    Deleuze, "Difference and Repetition," 39-102.

WEEK 8:     Descombes, "The End of Time," 168-190.
                    Lyotard, "On a Figure of Discourse," Toward the Post-Modern (packet).
                    Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations," Selected Writings (packet).

WEEK 9: Levinas, "Sensibility and the Face" & "Ethics and the Face," Totality and Infinity (Packet).
Levinas, "Secrecy and Freedom," & "The Face," Ethics and Infinity (Packet).

WEEK 10:     Whitford, Editor's Introduction to The Irigaray Reader, 1-15.
                      Irigaray, "Equal or Different," 30-33.
                      Irigaray, "The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine," 118-132.
                      Irigaray, "Questions," 133-139.
                      Irigaray, "Sexual Difference," 165-177.

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Updated 21 February 1998