POLT 232 - Radical Political Theory: French Existentialism

FC SSCI

4 credits
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 and how ideas about the meaning of freedom, oppression, and personal identity extended to new questions and movements (such as “second-wave feminists” and the Black Power Movement) in France, the U.S., and beyond. By looking to French existentialist thought, our aim will be to question how this philosophical heritage shapes our thinking about the radical politics of race, gender, and class in the present.