Module PHL3078 for 2021/2
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
PHL3078: 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:
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 22 | 128 | 0 |
...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching | 22 | 11 lecture/seminars (approx. 1 hr lecture and 1 hr discussion of set readings) |
| Guided Independent Study | 48 | Reading and research |
| Guided Independent Study | 20 | Preparation and writing of 2 reading summaries |
| Guided Independent Study | 38 | Preparation and writing of essay |
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.
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
- Beverly Best, Werner Bonefeld and Chris O’Kane, The SAGE HANDBOOK of Critical Theory, 2018.
- Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer: ‘The Dialectic of Enlightenment’ (1944/2002) Stanford University Press.
- Theodor W. Adorno: ‘Minima Moralia’ (2005), Verso.
- Jodi Dean, J. (2005). ‘Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics’, Cultural Politics, 1(1), pp. 51-74.
- Erich Fromm: ‘Escape from Freedom’ (2011), Ishi Press.
- Nancy Fraser Redistribution and Recognition (2013).
- Christian Fuchs, Anxiety and Politics in the New Age of Authoritarian Capitalism, Triple C (2017).
- Axel Honneth, ‘Disrespect. The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory’ (2007), Polity Press.
- Threbor Scholz, Digital Labor, Tayor and Francis, 2013.
- Ritu Vij, The global subject of precarity (2019).
