Comparative Literature 2094 (Spring 2024)

CRITICAL THEORY
Fridays, 12.30-14.20

Professor
Dr J Daniel Elam
jdelam@hku.hk
Run Run Shaw Tower, Room 9.42
hku.zoom.us/my/jdelam
Office hours (in person and over Zoom) are by appointment: jdelam.as.me

Tutor
Mr Abolfazl Ahangari
ahangari@connect.hku.hk
Tutorials : Mondays at 9.30-10.20 and 10.30-11.20

COURSE DESCRIPTION: WHAT TYPE OF THEORY IS ‘CRITICAL’?

This course is a thorough introduction to one of the most influential schools of thought
in the twentieth century, the Frankfurt School. Critics affiliated with the Frankfurt
School inherited a long history of German critique inaugurated by Immanuel Kant. This
mode of critique was invested in the relationship between aesthetics and human
experience. The Frankfurt School reinvented this critical tradition to understand the
relationship between aesthetics and politics at in the context of capitalism and fascism in
the 1920s and the 1930s; in the context of totalitarianism of the 1940s; and in the context
of its afterlives in the 1950s and 1960s.
Thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School therefore reinvigorated the specifically
German tradition of critique (Kritik) to examine political and social life at a moment of
extreme urgency. What does it mean to practice critique in the face of fascism and
totalitarianism? What modes of critical thought are conducive to trace the relationship
between aesthetics and politics? What does it mean to write philosophy for a world that
you won’t live to see? Or, later, what does it mean to practice critique in a world that
should have killed you, but instead has left you with a ‘damaged life’?
We live in a world fundamentally shaped by the forces of capitalism, xenophobia,
fascism, totalitarianism, and colonialism – and much like the 1920s and 1930s, we live at
a moment where these forces are operating with renewed energy. This upper-level
introduction to the Frankfurt School therefore revolves around the central questions:
What is critique? Why is critique necessary? How does critique help us comprehend and
respond to the urgent crises of the world we live in?

COURSE OBJECTIVES
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
a) identify the key thinkers, key concerns, and key debates affiliated with the Frankfurt
School
b) articulate, in their own words and to different audiences, the arguments and style of
various critical theorists
c) explain what ‘critique’ is, assess various methods of ‘critique’, and to locate ‘critical
thought’ in the broader context of the German philosophical tradition (both within
and beyond Germany itself)
d) produce their own criticism of the present by synthesising the various practices
heralded under the rubrics of Frankfurt School critical thought
COURSE ASSIGNMENTS
Midterm Paper 20%
Students will write an essay (2500-3500 words; or 5-7 pages, double-spaced) in response
to a prompt of their choice. The prompts will be given to students on 01 March 2024.
The midterm will be due by email on 08 March by 17h HKT. The midterm paper
requires no outside research.
Reading/Lecture Response 5%
Students will write a response to the reading and the class lecture once during the
semester (this will be assigned on the first day of class). The response will adhere to a
template available on Moodle, and the central component of the response is three ‘dumb
questions’. Students must submit their response to the tutor by email no later than the
Monday following the class. The tutor will collect and anonymise the ‘dumb questions’
for the professor to answer at the beginning of the following class.
Kindergarten Critical Theory 15%
In the form of a short presentation (maximum 10 minutes), students will explain a
concept, term, or argument of the Frankfurt School (of their choice) for an imagined
audience of primary school students. Although this presentation is an individual
assignment, students will deliver their presentations in groups of four. Students should
schedule the time for their presentation via jdelam.as.me/KCT no later than 31 January.
Manifesto (First Draft and Workshop) 10%
Students will present a manifesto (750-1000 words) for their final projects to a small
group of their peers. The manifesto must articulate the scope, vision, purpose, and
necessity of their final projects (see below). Students should submit a draft of their
manifesto 24 hours before their group meeting. During the group meeting, students will
deliver a five-minute version of their manifesto and offer constructive feedback on their
peers’ manifestos. Students should schedule the time for their workshop via
jdelam.as.me/manifesto no later than 15 March.
Final Project: A Critical Archive 30%
Students will create an archive in the style of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project. The
archive will feature a revised manifesto (or ‘exposé’), at least fifty catalogued objects, a
critical curatorial note, and an explanation of the order/arrangement of the collection.
The focus, the scope, and the purpose of the archive should be clear and the objects in
the archive should reflect (in some way, even if tangentially) this focus and purpose.
Collectively, the archive’s components should make (or gesture towards) an argument
about politics, aesthetics, and the contemporary social world. The archives can be digital
or physical, they can be real or fictional, and they can have a narrow or wide scope.
Students will begin working on this archive during tutorial sessions after reading week,
and receive feedback from the professor, the tutor, and their classmates along the way.
Participation 20%
The size and format of this course relies on student attendance and active participation.
Full attendance without substantive participation will receive the maximum grade of C in
this category. Students should come to class having read the material and prepared to
discuss it. With dense writing, this often involves expressing total confusion and
frustration. It also involves disagreement and debate – done respectfully and always in
the service of collaboration. Participation in class, in tutorial sessions, optional classes,
and in office hours are all forms of active class participation. Students are encouraged to
attend office hours at least once during the semester to discuss their work.
COURSE SCHEDULE
This course schedule is subject to change. This schedule is accurate as of 19 January.
Students are encouraged to purchase their own copies of the texts but the selections will be
available on Moodle.

Introductions and Foundations

19 January Introduction to the course

26 January Marxism
Karl Marx, from German Ideology
Karl Marx, ‘The Jewish Question’

02 February Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud, “Why War?”
Sigmund Freud, from Civilisation and its Discontents

09 February no class (Lunar New Year)

optional reading
Immanuel Kant, from Critique of the Power of Judgement

16 February no class (Lunar New Year)

optional reading:
Friedrich von Schiller, from On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Optional Class I Thursday 22 February, 14.00-15.30

Friedrich Nietzsche, from On the Use and Abuse of History for Life

The Uses of History

23 February The Arcades Project
Walter Benjamin, ‘Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century’
Walter Benjamin, ‘The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire’
Walter Benjamin, ‘Exposé of 1935’

01 March History
Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’

08 March no class (Reading Week)

midterm essay due by 17h HKT
optional reading:
Jorge Luis Borges, ‘The Analytical Language of John Wilkins’

Disenchantment and Enlightenment

15 March Disenchantment and Vocation
Max Weber, ‘The Scholar’s Work’
Max Weber, from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Optional Class II Thursday 21 March, 14.00-15.30

Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical
Reproducibility’
 22 March Enlightenment
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, from The Dialectic of
Enlightenment

29 March no class (Easter)

optional reading:
Gershom Scholem, from Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

Fascism and its Legacies

05 April Authority
Herbert Marcuse, from A Study on Authority
Erich Fromm, from Escape from Freedom

12 April Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt, ‘What is Authority?’
Hannah Arendt, from The Origins of Totalitarianism

Optional Class III Thursday 18 April, 14.00-15.30

Theodor Adorno, from Minima Moralia
Theodor Adorno, from “On Commitment”

19 April Banality of Evil

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem

Afterlives
26 April What is Critique?
Michel Foucault, ‘What is Critique?’
Judith Butler, ‘What is Critique?’
Angela Davis, ‘Marcuse’s Legacies’