General Information
Course Description
9588 - Hegemonies of Pluralism and Voices from the Margins - The conceptual apparatus of the social sciences (adapted to a great extent in the humanities) is reworked by succeeding generations to fit changing social, intellectual and geographical/communicative contexts. The Marxist/Gramscian idea of hegemony, for example, was first formulated to deal with how class hierarchies developed in Europe and how the non-elite were persuaded to buy into the resulting social contract. Feminist scholars have led the way in extending the class analysis to incorporate hegemonies of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture and nature, etc. We will hypothesize that in contemporary pluralistic societies various distinctions from the mainstream operate in parallel fashion. To speak from any margin encourages solidarity with voices from other margins. We will consider whether identity politics privileges the margins to an extent that destabilizes traditional notions of community, national identity and citizenship. How do we imagine community if we do not share the grounds of membership? Does ethnography provide examples of societies that do not critique from the margins?
Proposed theorists: Marx, Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Williams, Paul Willis, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Benedict Anderson, Gayatri Spivak, Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, Stephen Jay Gould, Laura Nader (Naked Science), Lee D. Baker.
