RHETORIC 116, Introduction to Critique and Critical Theory
Summer, 2021, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Rhetoric
Instructor: Dale Carrico, dcarrico@sfai.edu; ndaleca@gmail.comCourse Blog:
https://rhet116summer20.blogspot.com/2021/06/our-syllabus.html
1-3.45 pm, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, July 6 through August 13, in Session D (Remote Instruction)
Rough Basis for Grade: Attendance/Participation, 20%; Reading Responses, 15%; Co-Facilitation/In-Class Presentation, 15%; Final Paper/Project, 5-6pp., 50%.
Course Catalog Description
Analysis of rhetorical practice in the context of social and cultural change with particular reference to the historical transition from pre-industrial to industrial society in the west.
Class Description
What does it mean to think critically and why is this valuable? It is commonplace to equate “being critical” of an argument, a form, or a person with being dismissive of them. But what if being critical is a way of engaging with ideas and understanding people more deeply, more responsibly, or more creatively? What is the purpose of critique and do critics have a crucial function in a society or a crisis? What is the formal discipline of "Critical Theory" and why is so much scholarly work shaped by its preoccupations and terms? In this course we will explore histories and practices of critique and criticism. We will draw from the tradition of rhetoric to elaborate and to workshop practical skills in logical argument, textual interpretation, conflict resolution, and public debate. We will consider the ways critique has operated across the humanities and social sciences historically, as well as the ways critique continues to be mobilized in politics, art making, social resistance, personal and public life.
JULY
Week One, Declarations
Tuesday, July 6 Introduction to Course Themes and Personal Introductions.
SKILL SET: Key Definitions
[1] Rhetoric is the facilitation of efficacious discourse as well as an ongoing inquiry into the terms on the basis of which discourse comes to seem efficacious or not. Rhetoric is concerned with the occasional, interested, and figurative dimensions of discourse.
[2] A text is an event experienced as arising from intention, offered up to the hearing of an audience, and obligating a responsiveness equal to it.
[3] An argument is a claim supported by reasons and/or evidence.
[4] Critique is the systematic examination, elaboration, and evaluation of discourse.
Wednesday, July 11 U.S.Declaration of Independence ; Declaration of Rights and Sentiments of the Seneca Falls Convention
SKILL SET: Textual Materiality, Performativity, Citationality
Thursday, July 12, Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience; John Perry Barlow, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
SKILL SET: Audiences (Sympathetic, Unsympathetic, Apathetic) and Intentions (Interrogation, Conviction, Persuasion, Reconciliation)
Week Two, Nietzsche: Ancients and Moderns
Tuesday, July 13 Bernard de Bovier de Fontenelle, Digression on the Ancients and the Moderns (handout); Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
SKILL SET: Ancients and Moderns, Aristotelian Rhetoric: Forensic, Legislative, Epideictic
Wednesday, July 14 W.E.B. DuBois, Of Our Spiritual Strivings; Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View
SKILL SET: Aristotelian rhetoric: Ethos, Pathos, Logos
Thursday, July 15 Frederich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense
SKILL SET: The literal as conventional, the figurative as deviant; Figures, Tropes, Schemes; Four Master Tropes
Week Three: Fetishisms: Marx and Freud
Tuesday, July 20 Karl Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (selections)
SKILL SET: Four Habits of Argumentative Writing: 1. Formulate a Strong Thesis, 2. Define Your Terms, 3, Substantiate/Contextualize, 4, Anticipate ObjectionsWednesday, July 21 Roland Barthes, Mythologies (selections); Naomi Klein, No Logo (selection)
Thursday, July 22 Sigmund Freud, Fetishism
SKILL SET: The Toulmin Schema
Week Four, Intersectional Feminism
Tuesday, July 27 William Burroughs, Immortality; Valerie Solanas, The SCUM Manifesto
SKILL SET: Logoi Dissoi
Wednesday, July 28 The Combahee River Collective Statement; Audre Lorde, Age,Rage, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference
SKILL SET: Rogerian Rhetoric
Thursday, July 29 Sandy Stone, The Empire Strikes Back; Alison Kafer, “Imagined Futures” from Feminist Queer Crip
AUGUST
Week Five, Environmental Justice
Tuesday, August 3 Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like A Mountain ; John Bellamy Foster, The Four Laws of Ecology and the Four Anti-Ecological Laws of Capitalism ; Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Introduction)
Wednesday, August 4 Hazel Johnson, A Personal Story; Robert Bullard, Environment and Morality: Confronting Environmental Racism
SKILL SET: Keywords/Alternate Final Project
Thursday, August 5 Workshopping Final Projects
Week Six, Abolition Democracy
Tuesday, August 10 Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (selections)
Wednesday, August 11 Mariame Kaba, Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police; Josie Duffy Rice, Mariame Kaba, Reina Sultan, “What Does Accountability Look Like Without Punishment?” ; Judith Butler, “The Force of Nonviolence,” Gifford Lecture (video)
Thursday, August 12 Conclusions, Submission of Final Work, Bacchanal
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