The relationship between ethical reflection and culture is far from clear and peaceful. After the process of rationalization of modernity, (from the seventeenth century onwards), philosophy has tended to decouple the problems associated with morality from their possible cultural determination. However, the successive crises associated with rationalization as well as the current theoretical criticisms of liberalism have revealed the importance of cultural frameworks for our moral orientation. Therefore, the first aim of this course will be to set the theoretical base both for this criticism and the link between cultural identity and moral orientation. Having considered the link between morality and culture the political problem of recognition inevitably arises. The student must acquire an understanding of the intellectual tradition that has theorized about the problem of recognition, and how it is connected with the controversies generated by the politics of identity: from the debate on multiculturalism and the criticism of colonialism, passing through the understanding of new hybrid and intersectional forms of identity. Likewise, the course will deal with thematization of how culture can become an obstacle to the moral autonomy of subjects: either due to the colonization of common sense by discourses that consolidate established power relations (ideology, hegemony), or because they generate life forms that alienate self-development and the ability to be guided by ethical goals.
Each week will focus on one topic, as specified in the schedule below. For each topic, there will be a master session led by Gonzalo Velasco (GV in the schedule bellow) and a seminar led by Teresa Casas (TC). In the seminar we¿ll put into practice methodologies of cultural analysis with special emphasis on autoethnography¿cultural analysis that stems (and transcends) self-narrative.
First week
Course Presentation. Ethics, culture and yourselves.
Course presentation, organization or oral presentations. Introduction: the self as method.
Second week
Set 13th
Critiques of the disengaged self of modernity and contemporary recovering of experience
(GV)
Self-Knowledge vs Self-help
Oral Presentations
Class Material: fragments from Return to Reims, Didier Eriborn. El Entusiasmo,
Remedios Zafra. Also: I may destroy you, episode 1.
Third Week
The cultural approach to morality: social order, cooperation, norms (and its transgression)
(GV)
Theatrum mundi: the ethics of authenticity..
Oral presentation
Class material: I may destroy you, episode 9, This is america, by Childish Gambino
Fourth week
Identity politics and the fight for recognition: emancipatory potential and current critiques
(GV)
Gender and race in social organization, norms (and it¿s transgression)
Oral Presentation
Class material: episode from The Handmaid¿s Tale & I am not your negro, Roul Peck
Fifth Week
Replies to the critiques of identity politics (GV)
Recognition or redistribution?
Oral presentation
Class materials: Get out, by Jordan Peele; episode I may destroy you (pay attention
to the relation between Bella and her publisher)
Sixth week
Situated Knowledge and Intersectionality (GV)
Who is the subject of feminism?
Class material: TBC
Seventh week
Giving Account of Oneself: Implication on Structural Injustices (I) (GV)
#blacklivesmatter, #sayhername:I am not racist
Oral presentations.
Class Material: Episode from Insecure
Ninth Week
Nov 2nd.
Retelling myself. Making sense of my experience.
Borderlands/la frontera, by Gloria Anzaldúa
Ana Mendiea,, Frida Khalo, and I may destroy you
Tenth week
The voice of the others: attending to testimonies on epistemic injustices.
ROOM 14.0.9 12.15 a 13.45h.
The web of silence
The Assistant, by Kitty Green
Episode 4, I may destroy you.
Oral presentations.
Eleventh week
The voice of the others: multiculturalism and decolonial approaches (GV)
Who has the right to tell?
Observation exercise. I¿ll say more in the days prior to this class.
Twelfth week
Saying each other in common: epistemic communities as resistance to the experience of harm
and injustice (GV)
Self-Narrative
The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson
Thirteenth week
Giving account of oneself on contemporary social pathologies(GV)
My epistemic community
Oral presentations
Class material: episode from It¿s a s
Fourteenth week
Approach to self-exploration methodologies: autoethnography and autotheory.
The Mandate of happiness (or the good life)
Oral presentations
Class material: fragments from El Entusiasmo by Remedios Zafra, fragments from
Return to Reims by Didier Eribon
Recursos Electrónicos *