Nietzsche, Foucault, Genealogy

3 Credits.

This political theory graduate seminar explores the political and philosophical stakes of genealogy as initiated and inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. We shall investigate the contours of genealogy as a scholarly approach to history, the politics of memory, colonialism/empire, the relationship between truth and power, race, sexuality, nature, language and authority. In addition to an encounter with the primary sources of these authors, seminar participants will take up a range of texts/authors whose work has been catalyzed by their innovations--even if those who adopt their scholarly sensibilities do no always necessarily share their politics and geographical points of reference. This will require us to consider their intellectual heirs that span the fascist to the radically democratic; the Anglo-Eurocentric to Indigenous and planetary, and the heteronormative to the gender non-conforming. Beyond Nietzsche and Foucault, authors might include (but not be limited to) Fanon, Brown, Connolly, Dunbar-Ortiz, Derrida, Butler, Hitler, Toscano, and Schmitt.