French Social Thought, Durkheim to Foucault

Harvard FAS

A survey of major themes and debates in modern French social theory over the span of a century, from Durkheim's neo-Kantian theory of social solidarity and the symbolic to Foucault's conception of the historical a priori, and Foucault's genealogical studies of power, bio-power, and sexuality. Major readings by Durkheim, Mauss, Sartre, Kojève, Fanon, de Beauvoir, Lévinas, Lévi-Strauss, Althusser, Derrida, and Foucault.