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Undergraduate Module Descriptor

PHL2040: Critical Theory: The Frankfurt School and Communicative Capitalism

This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.

Module Content

Syllabus Plan

This module studies concepts developed by the philosophers in the Freudo-Marxist Frankfurt School in the 20th century and the relevance or uptake of these concepts in contemporary critiques of society and capitalism.

The module aims to introduce you to critical analyses and reflections on the relationship between social structure and organisation and the individual in Modernity. This will be achieved through lectures on works by some predecessor theories, and some main proponents of critical theory, such as Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, and Erich Fromm.

Three lecture sessions will introduce you to recent works in Critical Theory on alienation and freedom, the role of religion in the 21st Century and the formation of the self and social and political agency, looking at works by philosphers such as Jodi Dean, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser and Christian Fuchs.

Learning and Teaching

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).

Other Learning Resources

- Film ‘Hannah Arendt’ (2012) by Margarete von Trotta (organised viewing for the course by Dr Hauskeller).

- BBC4 The Frankfurt School (14 Jan 2010), by Melvyn Bragg and guests.

- BBC Mini-Series: The Century of the Self 2002, parts 1-4.

How this Module is Assessed

In the tables below, you will see reference to 'ILO's. An ILO is an Intended Learning Outcome - see Aims and Learning Outcomes for details of the ILOs for this module.

Formative Assessment

A formative assessment is designed to give you feedback on your understanding of the module content but it will not count towards your mark for the module.

Summative Assessment

A summative assessment counts towards your mark for the module. The table below tells you what percentage of your mark will come from which type of assessment.

...and this table provides further details on the summative assessments for this module.

Re-assessment

Re-assessment takes place when the summative assessment has not been completed by the original deadline, and the student has been allowed to refer or defer it to a later date (this only happens following certain criteria and is always subject to exam board approval). For obvious reasons, re-assessments cannot be the same as the original assessment and so these alternatives are set. In cases where the form of assessment is the same, the content will nevertheless be different.

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