English 575 Post 9/11 Theory (Winter 2008)
Jeremiah Wright as critical theorist
From Dennis, Time Wise’s article arguing that Jeremiah Wright was right: Indignation doesn’t work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country–the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of [...]
images of the not unforeseeable
In Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, Derrida argues that “September 11″ is not an event (in the sense that Heidegger uses the term) because, in part, it was not unforeseeable. Of course, there is the obvious case of the attacks on the World Trade Center in the [...]
what is a hero?
As I was struggling on the bike at the gym on Friday, I saw on television the story of the British plane that lost power and crashed. The pilot was being heralded as a hero (“The British pilot who made an emergency crash landing into London’s Heathrow airport is now being hailed as a hero,” [...]
Suheir Hammad’s poetry
An video of Suheir Hammad’s poetry, appropriate in my case now as I’m sitting in on a Post 9/11 Theory course. This week we’re discussing Slavoj Zizek’s The Desert of the Real; I’ll try to post more on my thoughts on this book later, but now I have some grading to do. over there is [...]
a culture of humiliation: Zizek, shame, and what does it mean to be American?
Today was the first meeting of Gottlieb’s “Theory after 9/11″ Seminar. During class we read Slavoj Zizek’s In These Times article What Rumsfeld Doesn’t Know That He Knows About Abu Ghraib. Zizek argues that despite the claims of the media and Bush administration that the humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was not symbolic of [...]
Baudrillard’s ethics
Today I read Jean Baudrillard’s The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays, a book Evan Gottlieb assigned for his theory course this term, titled “Post 9/11 Theory.” I’m excited that I’m going to be sitting in on the class and having a chance this term to engage in dialogue with others about theory. I’m a [...]
