Liberal Arts for Advanced Students I

Taking the unfinished final project of cultural theorist Mark Fisher as its starting point, this course will explore the complex relationship between capitalism and desire. We will spend the first half of the semester analyzing the kinds of desire that capitalism permits—with careful attention to the difference between the “permitted” and the “possible”—before turning to what a desire for something of a different order—a postcapitalist desire—might look like. By the end of the course students can expect to be familiar with a wide range of recent critical thought, and to be able to articulate the relation of abstract concepts to contemporary everyday life.