Injustices & Resistance

Office: Hall 1B

Office Hours: W, 2-4, Hall 01B; or by apptmt

tjdonahueAThaverford.edu

What are the major identity-based injustices of our time? Gender, race, sexuality, class, sweatshops? What are the harms done by these and other injustices, and how can we resist them? Disloyalty, separatism, coalition, neither/nor? This course examines leading concepts and theories of injustice and resistance. Our aim is to give students the tools to build their own theory about these and other alleged injustices, and the merits of various forms of resisting them.

Course Requirements. To earn full credit, you must:

(1) Participate in class discussion and class activities. Emphasis on think-pair-share, small group discussions. Feedback on peers' writing.

(2) Submit 6 response papers. On alternating weeks from Session 3 on, you submit a response, of not more than 350 words, that examines some thesis that that week’s reading has argued. The paper should state the thesis and then argue for or against it. If you argue for it, you should provide your own reasons for it--not the author's reasons. Here's an example: "Judith Shklar argues that it was better to proceed with the Tokyo and Nuremberg Trials than to summarily punish the accused, as Winston Churchill had proposed. I shall argue instead that it would have been better to follow Churchill's proposal and summarily punish the accused. My main reason will be that summarily punishing the top leaders while avoiding trials would have given the world the punishment it wanted to see, while ensuring that no one could argue that the Allies were using corrupt and unjust legal procedures to obtain predetermined political results. By contrast, the trials muddied the distinction between normal times and extraordinary times, and thus encouraged people to think that the Allies valued neither legality nor justice." Click here for guidelines on writing response papers.

(3) On the other alternating weeks from Session 4 on, you submit 6 drafts of a final paper: topic and various questions about it, add your question and existing answers to it, add your answer (thesis) and two other answers, add sketch of your argument for your answer, add arguments for and against the other answers, write intro and conclusion.

(4) Reading check-ins: Did you do the reading?

(5) Submit final paper last day of exams (4,000 words).

Course Assessment. Course marks will be computed on the following distribution: Class Participation and Peer Writing Feedback: 20%; Response Papers: 24% (4% each); Drafts 24% (4% each): Reading Check-ins 14%; Final Paper: 18%.

Course format. The course will be discussion oriented. I will usually begin sessions by presenting a thesis advanced in the week’s reading. I will discuss its implications. I will then ask one or many of you whether you think the thesis true or false, and why. We shall then examine the reasons you offer for your view. We shall then turn to the reasons the text offers in defense of the thesis. I will ask you what you think of those reasons, and so forth. The course in part aims to improve your skill in reasoned argument.

SCHEDULE

Session 1. Introduction

Session 2. Capitalist Domination?

Allen W. Wood, “Capitalist Exploitation,” Karl Marx¸2nd ed (Routledge, 2004), 242-264

Wood, “Alienation and Capitalism,” Karl Marx, 44-60

Richard Miller, “The Concept of a Ruling Class,” Analyzing Marx: Morality, Power, and History (Princeton UP 1985), 101-114 only

Session 3. Global Domination by the Meritocrats? Victim Groups: Individual Freedom, Collective Unfreedom?

Anthony Appiah, “The myth of meritocracy: Who really gets what they deserve?” The Guardian (19 Oct 2018)

Justin Gest, “The New Minority: A Counter-narrative and Its Politics,” The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality (Oxford UP 2016): 20-39

G. A. Cohen, “The Structure of Proletarian [White Working Class?] Unfreedom,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (1983): 3-33

Session 4. Individual Freedom, Collective Unfreedom? (continued) Global Male Supremacy?

Cohen, “The Structure of Proletarian [White Working Class?] Unfreedom,” Philosophy and Public Affairs

Marilyn French, "Introduction," "Systemic Discrimination against Women," The War against Women (Ballantine Books, 1992), READ ONLY pp. 9-51, 99-106

Session 5. Global Male Supremacy? Exploitation, Sexual Domination, Violence

Carole Pateman, "Wives, Slaves, and Wage Slaves," The Sexual Contract (Polity, 1988), pp. 119-133

Catharine MacKinnon, "Sexuality," Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Harvard UP, 1989), pp. 126-154.

Ann E. Cudd, "Violence as a Force of Oppression," Analyzing Oppression (Oxford UP, 2006), pp. 85-98

Session 6. Do We Live under Global White Supremacy?

Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Cornell UP, 1997), pp. 1-7, 19-40 [Haverford click here] [Bryn Mawr click here]

Mills, “White Supremacy as Sociopolitical System,” From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003): 177-194

Session 7. (1) The Nature of Oppression and Systematic Injustice. (2) The Role of Ideologies in Systematic Injustice.

Young, “Five Faces of Oppression,” Justice and the Politics of Difference, pp. 39-65

Ann E. Cudd, “Oppression: The Fundamental Injustice of Social Institutions,” Analyzing Oppression (Oxford UP, 2006): 1-29, READ 3-10, 20-29

Tommie Shelby, “Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory,” Philosophical Forum (2003) pp. 153-180, READ TO 164 ONLY.

Session 8. Resistance through Disobedience and Disloyalty

Noel Ignatiev, “Treason to Whiteness Is Loyalty to Humanity,” in Lisa Heldke and Peg O’Connor (eds.), Oppression, Privilege & Resistance (McGraw Hill, 2004), pp. 605-610

Candice Delmas, "Principled Disobedience," "In Defense of Uncivil Disobedience," A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should be Uncivil (Oxford UP, 2018): 21-71

Session 9. Resistance Strategies: Education

James Herbert Williams and Eric de Marais, "Global Health Education," Social Work Research 40 (2016): 3-6

The TCF School: Cultures of Resistance Campus

Katha Pollitt, "Why We Read: Canon to the Right of Me..." in Lisa Heldke and Peg O’Connor (eds.), Oppression, Privilege & Resistance (McGraw Hill, 2004)

Session 10. NO NEW READINGS--CATCH UP ON SESSION 9, AND WORK ON 4TH (GROUP) RESPONSE PAPER--DUE TUES 4/7

(Resistance Strategies: Separatism and Identity Politics

James Tully, "Identity Politics," Cambridge History of Political Thought

“Resistance Strategy Three: Separatism and Identity Politics,” in Heldke and O’Connor, pp. 626-663)

4TH (GROUP) RESPONSE PAPER DUE TUES 4/7

Session 11. (4/10-4/16) Solidarity in Crises and Injustices

Eric Klinenberg, "We Need Social Solidarity, Not Just Social Distancing," New York Times 14 March 2020

Andrea Sangiovanni, "Solidarity as Joint Action," Journal of Applied Philosophy 32 (2016), READ ONLY TO p. 348

NEXT STAGE RESEARCH PROJECT DUE 4/17

Session 12. (4/17-4/23) How to Build COVID Coalitions Across Lines of Difference?

COVID-19 Clinical Research Coalition, "Global coalition to accelerate COVID-19 clinical research in resource-limited settings," The Lancet 2 April 2020

Edwina Barvosa-Carter, "Multiple Identity and Coalition Building: How Identity Differences within Us Enable Radical Alliances among Us," Contemporary Justice Review (1999)

Sessions 13-14 (4/24-5/1). Resistance Strategies: Dualisms or Connections?

Jade Begay, "Decolonizing Community Care in Response to COVID-19," NDN Collective 13 March 2020

Walter Mignolo, “Coloniality: The Darker Side of Modernity,” in Modernologies, ed. C. Breitwisser (MACBA, 2009): 39-49

Evan Pierce, "To defeat COVID-19, we need a new cosmopolitanism," TRTWorld 6 April 2020

Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Case for Contamination,” New York Times Magazine (1 January 2006)

(Skipped: Resistance Strategies: Revolution

“Resistance Strategy Four: Revolution,” in Heldke and O’Connor, pp. 664-701

Session 12. Resistance Strategies: Coalition

“Resistance Strategy Four: Coalition,” in Heldke and O’Connor, pp. 702-738

Session 13. Resistance Strategies: Neither/Nor

Édouard Glissant, “Creolization in the Making of the Americas,” Caribbean Quarterly 54 (2008): 81-89

“Resistance Strategy Five: Neither/Nor,” in Heldke and O’Connor, pp. 739-786)

FINAL PAPER DUE LAST DAY OF EXAMS