SPACE, TIME, REVOLUTION JPG1503 | Spring 2012 | W 2:10-5:00pm SS2124a Kanishka Goonewardena Program in Planning Department of Geography University

of Toronto T: +14169782974 E: kanishka.goonewardena@utoronto.ca O/H: T 1:10-3:00pm, SS5062 There the phrase went beyond the content; here the content goes beyond the phrase. Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852 a DESCRIPTION This graduate seminar seeks to occupy a certain theoretical terrain of radical politics--one that is currently animated by the unmistakable sense of a crisis of capitalism (no more: There Is No Alternative or End of History) as much as the widespread anticipation of new political and indeed historical possibilities (why not, now, communism?). If the immediate cause of this course consists in the conjunction of a profound awareness of systemic malfunction with a global (99%) desire for an exit from the actually existing world that however lacks a matching degree of clarity on What Is To Be Done? or Who Is Going To Do It?, then its essential references become twofold. On the one hand there are the recent attempts by such thinkers as Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Daniel Bensad, Jacques Rancire, Giorgio Agamben, Bruno Bosteels, Peter Hallward and Alberto Toscano to retheorize revolution at the limits of still regnant if no longer hegemonic capital and liberal-democracy. On the other hand lies the need to interrogate the new concepts of event, situation, exception, aesthetics, disagreement and communism variously proposed by these students of politics in the historical court of lived revolutionary experiences produced by socialist and anti-colonial politics, with an eye on their present or future use-value as well. Given the practical limits of a 12 week and 36 hour seminar, massive omissions are inevitable; yet we have five ambitious topics to anchor this course, with due attention to the spatial and temporal dimensions of revolutionary politics. The 2012 version includes a focus on Badiou, Bosteels and Hallward, with essential politico-theoretical background provided by Carl Schmitt, Lenin, Lefebvre, Althusser, Fanon and the historical events called Paris Commune, Cultural Revolution and May 68. b > > > REQUIREMENTS Five short essays (one essay per topic): 50% (5*10%) Term paper, film, website or other project: 30% Seminar participation (3*12=36 hours): 20% The short essays (250-500 words) will address central issues raised by course readings, in response to questions posed by participants of the seminar. Each essay must be sent electronically to everyone in the course at least 24 hours prior to the seminar devoted to discussing the readings corresponding to it. As such, late essays will contribute nothing to the seminar or to anyones course grade. Only those who are unable officially to enroll in this course may be allowed to audit it.

MAIN TOPICS (T1 T5) AND SCHEDULE OF SEMINARS (S1 S12) Its useless to wait . . . The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection, 2007

T0

Introduction (S1: Jan 11) Antonio Gramsci, The Revolution Against Capital, Avanti!, 24.12.1917. Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Concept of History, 1940. Peter Hallward, 'The Politics of Prescription', South Atlantic Quarterly 104.4, 2005, 769-789. Peter Hallward, The Will of the People: Notes Towards a Dialectical Voluntarism, Radical Philosophy 155, 2009, 17-29. Neil Smith, The Revolutionary Imperative, Antipode 41, 2009, 50-65. Mike Davis, Spring Confronts Winter, New Left Review 72, 2011, 5-15.

T1

Time and History (S2: Jan 18, S3: Jan 25) Louis Althusser, Contradiction and Overdetermination [1962] in For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster, London: Verso, 1969 [1965], 87-128. Louis Althusser, The Errors of Classical Economics: An Outline for a Concept of Historical Time in Louis Althusser and tienne Balibar, Reading Capital, trans. Ben Brewster, London: Verso, 1970 [1968], 91118. Perry Anderson, Modernity and Revolution, New Left Review I/144, 1984, 96-114. Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, trans. Stuart Elden and Gerald Moore, intro. Stuart Elden, London: Continuum, 2004 [1992]. Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. and intro. Keith Tribe, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004 [1979]. Peter Osborne, The Politics of Time, London: Verso, 1995.

T2

This aint Governmentality! (S4: Feb 1, S5: Feb 8) V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917/1918. Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis and Slavoj Zizek, eds., Lenin Reloaded: Towards a Politics of Truth, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political [1932], trans and intro. George Schwab, foreword by Tracy B. Strong with Notes on Carl Schmitt by Leo Strauss, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Benno Teschke, Decisions and Indecisions, New Left Review 67, 2011, 61-95. Gopal Balakrishnan, The Geopolitics of Separation: Response to Teschkes Decisions and Indecisions, New Left Review 68, 2011, 5772. Benno Teschke, The Fetish of Geopolitics: Reply to Gopal Balakrishnan, New Left Review 69, 2011, 81-100. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington, preface by Jean-Paul Sartre, New York: Grove Press, 1963 [1961]. Immanuel Wallerstein, Reading Fanon in the 21st Century, New Left Review 57, 2009, 117-125. The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009 [2007].

T3

Politics X (S6: Feb 15, S7: Feb 22) Bruno Bosteels, Badiou and Politics, Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. and intro. Peter Hallward with An Interview with Alain Badiou, London: Verso, 2001 [1998]. Alain Badiou, Metapolitis, trans. and intro. Jason Barker, London: Verso, 2005 [1998]. Jacques Ranciere, 'Ten Theses on Politics', Theory and Event 5.3, 2001. Peter Hallward, Order and Event: On Badious Logic of Worlds, New Left Review 53, 2008, 97-122.

T4

Revolutions (S8: Feb 29, S9: Mar 7, S10: Mar 14, S11: Mar 21) Guy Debord, Attila Kotnyi and Raoul Vaneigem, Theses on the Paris Commune, 18.03.1962. Kristin Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune, foreword by Terry Eagleton, London: Verso, 2008 [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998]. Alain Badiou, The Paris Commune: A Political Declaration of Politics [2003] in Polemics, trans. and intro. Steve Corcoran, London: Verso, 2006, 257-290. Maurice Meisner, Maos China and After: A History of the Peoples Republic, third edition, New York: The Free Press, 1999. Alain Badiou, The Cultural Revolution: The Last Revolution? [2003] in Polemics, trans. and intro. Steve Corcoran, London: Verso, 2006, 291321. Henri Lefebvre, The Explosion: Marxism and the French Upheaval, trans. Alfred Ehrenfeld, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969 [1968]. Kristin Ross, May '68 and its Afterlives, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Perry Anderson, Dgringolade: The Fall of France, London Review of Books (02.09.2004) and Union Sucre: The Normalising of France, London Review of Books (23.09.2004).

T5

Communism (S12: Mar 28) Alain Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis, trans. David Macey and Steve Corcoran, London: Verso, 2010 [2008]. Bruno Bosteels, The Actuality of Communism, London: Verso, 2011. Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Zizek, eds., The Idea of Communism, London: Verso, 2010. Erik Swyngedouw, The Communist Hypothesis and Revolutionary Capitalisms: Exploring the Idea of Communist Geographies for the Twenty-first Century, Antipode 41, 2009, 298-319.

NOTE

The readings for this course may differ somewhat from the above, in accordance with the spontaneous evolution of our interests during the course of the seminar. We will read some of the texts listed here more or less in their entirety; others will be surveyed selectively. Most of the shorter readings will be made accessible electronically. You must plan on buying, copying or otherwise accessing the following texts: Lefebvres Rhythmanalysis (T1), Schmitts The Concept of the Political (T2), Fanons The Wretched of the Earth (T2), Bosteelss Badiou and Politics (T3), Rosss The Emergence of Social Space and May 68 and its Afterlives (T4), Meisners Maos China and After (T4) and Lefebvres The Explosion (T4). Suggestions for other readings will be considered.