Radical Political Theory in 20th-Century France and America

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Radical politics has usually been associated with Leftist political movements such as Marxism, feminism, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, etc. This course investigates one source of radical political thinking in French existentialist philosophy: how were ideas about the meaning of freedom, oppression, and personal identity extended to new contexts and questions between 1940 and the 1960s? Additionally, we will evaluate debates between French thinkers on various issues, such as the relationship between politics and violence as well as the promise (or peril) of communism. Our primary authors will include Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, among others. Finally, we will turn to the influence of these French thinkers in America, particularly among "second-wave feminists" and the Black Power Movement. To what extent did these Americans rely upon French thought to transform how they conceived of political action? And how does this heritage shape how we think about the radical politics of race, gender, and class in the present?