PHIL 008. First-Year Seminar: Aesthetics & Political Resistance


This first-year seminar critically examines the entangled relations between culture, politics, and society in order to appraise the revolutionary potential of aesthetics for challenging hegemonic structures of (neo-)liberal modernity. While the philosophical discipline of aesthetics has traditionally confined itself to questions of beauty, judgment, and taste, we will approach "aesthetics" as a fundamentally socially and politically mediated, experiential relationship between the individual and the external world. Some of the themes we will explore might include the relationship between beauty and ideology, the limits of radical art under capitalism, or the capacity of aesthetic objects and experiences to challenge how we inhabit in and move through the world. Our objects of study will comprise philosophical texts from the subdisciplines of critical theory, psychoanalysis, feminist studies, and philosophy of race, which we will read in conversation with a variety of aesthetic productions spanning music, film, performance art, and visual artwork.


Humanities.
1 credit.
Fall 2022. Ahmed.
Spring 2024. Ahmed.
Fall 2024. Ahmed.
Catalog chapter: Philosophy  
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/philosophy


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