Good reading skills and familiarity with philosophical essays. Basic knowledge of political philosophy and critical ability

After taking the course the student will be able to: - Know and understand the different approaches to the relationship between power and discourse at the social level. - Understand the basic points of some of the most relevant proposals in this regard. - Understand the usefulness and limits of the different approaches to analyze social and political reality. - To analyze social and political reality from a critical perspective. - To understand the relationship between imaginaries and social reality. -To identify how social imaginaries are embodied in diverse institutions (including cultural products).

BLOCK 1: Society, discourse, power UNIT 1: RHETORIC AS A POLITICAL REFLECTION OF DISCOURSE UNIT 2: DISCOURSE AND POWER: DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES 2.1. Marx: ideology and superstructure 2.2. Gramsci and the question of hegemony 2.3. A new vision of power in Foucault 2.4. The populist moment: Laclau and Mouffe UNIT 3: POWER AND SOCIAL IMAGINARIES IN C. CASTORIADIS 3.1. Power, domination and radical under-power 3.2. The imaginary structure of society UNIT 4: INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION 4.1. The non-neutrality of technique 4.2. Communication, power, politics BLOCK 2: Applied analysis of social imaginaries I1. NATURE I2. TECHNOLOGY I3. STATUS I4. INDIVIDUAL I5. ECONOMY I6. WOMAN I7. FREEDOM

The aim is to actively involve students in the learning process so that they become familiar with the tools studied and understand both their usefulness and their limits. The master classes will introduce the theories and fundamental concepts, while the continuous evaluation will focus on the work with texts and on the students' own work of applied analysis of different social imaginaries. The main objective of the course is to foster students' capacity for critical analysis.