Fall 2018 Seminar: The Frankfurt School and the paradoxical idea of progress

Until the 1960’s, the Left in the US was pri­mar­i­ly defined by the gov­ern­ment and the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion as the Com­mu­nist Par­ty USA. The col­lapse of the Com­mu­nist Left, which was sealed by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has left an enor­mous vac­u­um as to what the Left real­ly was and its last­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the rad­i­cal imag­i­na­tion both polit­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly. Today it must be exam­ined what ideas are at stake in groups claim­ing to be Left; name­ly, the mil­i­tant left wing of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty, small groups claim­ing to be rev­o­lu­tion­ary, eco­log­i­cal move­ments that tend towards a social­ist agen­da, anoth­er emer­gent fem­i­nism among many oth­ers. This course will dis­cuss what it means to be Left, both in the past and in the present and will posit some thoughts for a new left for­ma­tion ade­quate to the demands of the con­tem­po­rary world.

This sem­i­nar will address the very ambiva­lent and volatile rela­tion­ship between psy­cho­analy­sis and philo­soph­i­cal dis­course. The ongo­ing ten­sion between the epis­te­mo­log­i­cal ground­ing of psy­cho­analy­sis and the inex­act art and “sci­ence” of inter­pre­ta­tion needs a reex­am­i­na­tion. Giv­en the dom­i­nance of Behav­ioral and cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gy and the rel­e­ga­tion of Psy­cho­analy­sis to an upper class lux­u­ry with very lit­tle impact on every­day life, think­ing on the Left must reeval­u­ate the con­tem­po­rary con­text of psy­chopathol­o­gy in light of the its all too for­got­ten trans­for­ma­tive poten­tial.

We live in an age of ever increas­ing anx­i­ety and uncer­tain­ty. The com­mu­nal bonds, ide­o­log­i­cal cer­tain­ties, polit­i­cal assump­tions, and even cli­mat­ic pat­terns that once pro­vid­ed struc­ture and pre­dictabil­i­ty are quick­ly van­ish­ing. With­in this emerg­ing vor­tex, indi­vid­u­als attempt to cling to the lit­tle that still seems to be under their con­trol, their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty: their iden­ti­ties and lifestyle choic­es. Con­cur­rent­ly, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of suc­cess also becomes tied to their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, each indi­vid­ual is investor and invest­ment, a brand to be devel­oped, mar­ket­ed, and exploit­ed. All risks, suc­cess­es, and fail­ures, lay com­plete­ly on the shoul­ders of the indi­vid­ual.

This six week course will explore this age of anx­i­ety and its fetishiza­tion of the self. The course will be struc­tured around Kon­stan­ti­nos Tsoukalas’ recent book Age of Anx­i­ety and will also include read­ings from W.H. Auden, Leonard Cohen, Michael Sandel, Mau­r­izio Laz­zara­to, and Erich Fromm.