ENG
470 - Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit & Its Readers
Basic
Information
This three-credit
course will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Boardman Hall 209 between
2:00 and 3:15pm. The CRN for the course is 35047. Six hours of literature,
or the permission of the instructor, are required for enrollment. The
General Education "intensive writing" requirement is satisfied
by this course.
Course
Description
In this
course we will undertake a patient and attentive reading of Hegel's
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), arguably the single most influential
text in the intellectual tradition referred to as "critical theory."
We will proceed with Hegel's book as we would with comparable acts of
modernist achievement (Joyce, Proust, Woolf), building an understanding
of its complex architecture by attending closely to the details each
step of the way. We will supplement our own labors by referring to the
many acts of reading Hegel that precede our own, including those of
Kierkegaard, Marx and Engels, Alexandre Kojeve, Jean Hyppolite, Jacques
Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Theodor Adorno, Judith Butler, Gillian Rose,
Robert Pippin, Slavoj Zizek, and others.
Required
Texts
- Hegel's
The Phenomenology of Spirit (trans. Miller; Oxford)
- A Hegel
Dictionary by Michael Inwood (Blackwood)
- The
Cambridge Companion to Hegel (ed. Beiser, Cambridge)
- Various
essays TBA
Recommended
Texts
- Introduction
to the Reading of Hegel by Alexandre Kojeve
- The
Restlessness of the Negative by Jean-Luc Nancy (trans. Smith &
Miller, U of Minnesota)
- Hegel:
Three Studies by Theodor W. Adorno (trans. Nicholsen, MIT)
- Genesis
and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit by Jean Hyppolite
(Northwestern UP)
Required
Reading — Click here for
online syllabus
We will
proceed through the Phenomenology at a pace of thirty paragraphs
per class session. Secondary readings will be cued to concepts, topics,
and themes that emerge in the reading process. You will typically be
responsible for about twenty-five pages of background reading per session
and may be asked to present your independent researches to the class
in written and/or oral form.
Assignments
& Evaluation
- Frequent
and focused assignments and activities
(50%)
- Fifteen
pages of formal writing (35%)
- Class
attendance, preparation, and participationg (15%)
Plagiarism
& Academic Dishonesty
Plagiarism—the
presentation of someone else's writing and/or thinking as your own—will
result in immediate failure of the class and notification of the appropriate
University authorities. Other forms of academic dishonesty are, likewise,
not tolerated. Think hard, think for yourself, credit your sources,
and you'll do fine.
A
Note on Soundfiles Related to This Course
Because
of the density of the material covered in lectures and discussions,
and because winter weather sometimes makes missing a class session unavoidable
for one or more students, I try to make soundfiles of all class meetings.
These soundfiles are provided exclusively for the educational use of
students directly enrolled and actively participating in this class.
They are not to be shared outside this context for any reason whatsoever.
Further access to soundfiles will be denied to any student known to
have violated this stipulation.
Barthes
on "The Work of the Seminar"
The seminar's
work is the production of differences.
Difference is not conflict. In these small intellectual spaces, conflict
is merely the realistic decor, the crude parody of difference, a phantasmagoria.
Difference means—what? That each relation, gradually (it takes
time) is made original: discovers the originality of bodies taken one
by one, breaks off the reproduction of roles, the repetition of discourses,
counters any staging of prestige, of rivalry.
—Roland
Barthes, "To the Seminar" (1974)
Attendance
& Participation
Attendance
of this course is mandatory. If you miss more than two sessions (the equivalent
of one week of class time) without a medical excuse, your semester grade
may be lowered one full grade. Students missing more than four sessions
are unlikely to pass the class.
Your informed
participation is a key ingredient to the success of this class. Come to
class with questions and comments at the ready.
Disability
Notice
If you wish
to request an accommodation for a disability, please speak with me or
with Ann Smith, Coordinator of Services for Students with Disabilities
(Onward Building, 1-2319) as early as possible in the semester.
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