This course introduces theoretical accounts of modernity and the intellectual traditions from which they emerge, and presents key conceptual debates concerning the meanings of modernity: specifically, arguments that stem from the characterisation of modernity as a ‘dialectic of Enlightenment’. Within this context, the unit explores the ways that subjectivity and subjection, the relation between the individual and community, urban experience, and the role of culture and the aesthetic, have been conceptualised in theoretical accounts of modernity.
Core texts studied include: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Penguin, 2002), Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (Verso, 1997), Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Polity, 1994), Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life (NuVision, 2007), Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Harvard 2001) and Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents (Vintage, 2001).
This course is worth an optional 20 credits at Master’s level and costs £500. For further details, contact Dr Sarah Maclachlan: +44 (0) 161 247 1755; s.ma...@mmu.ac.uk. To apply, contact James Draper: +44 (0) 161 247 1787; j.dr...@mmu.ac.uk.