"Theories of Violence"

As the final installment of the Literary Criticism and Theory sequence, this course will understand the late period of theory (post-WWII to the present) as a phase of "self-assessment" and "critical interrogations." Postwar European theory can be understood as a form of witnessing of the failure of "Europe" globally. Decolonization everywhere European empires settled, European aesthetic and political theory "witnessed" the failure of the Enlightenment through ruminations on so-called "internal" genocide: the "shoah" or "Holocaust." This course then will be a survey of the late theories of aesthetics, sociality and violence. Europe as the double name of globalization and social violence will be the focus. Our case will be the United States. And aesthetics will occupy us as a question of "assessment."