POLs 3040 First Semester Essay Format

Essay Requirements

Pols 3040 First Semester Essay Format: 200-5000 words; Times New Roman 12 point text, single-spaced; Use a consistent citation style (choice is yours); Essays to be submitted by email as word documents (doc or docx). Ensure a bibliography is included. A cover page is not necessary. Due: Friday Dec. 3 by 11:59 PM. Late marks 1% per day up to Dec. 10. No essays will be accepted after Dec. 10. Marked out of 100, worth 20% of course total This essay will primarily serve as a means with which you can engage the various ideas and concepts discussed in the first semester. You will be asked to address at least two of the key thinkers, and show familiarity with how they deploy various concepts, be it ‘modernity’, ‘communism’, ‘emancipation’ and so on. In turn, you are encouraged to engage other theorists on the theme for each question, some of whom will be suggested under each of the five choices of thematic questions. Whichever choice you make, in addition to two of the thinkers covered in the course, you must cite at least three other scholarly sources/theorists. You must pick one of the four thematic questions. For your second semester essay, you are going to design your own, with your use of my questions here serving as a rubric as to how to formulate your own. Please don’t lose this document. Some tips: 1) Avoid ungrounded assertions. This is not an essay on your opinion on this or that matter. However, your point of view – should – come out in your essays. A means with which to do so is to be able to ground, that is to say, substantiate your point of view by deploying one of your cited sources and/or data that backs up your point. Making provisional statements, however, is acceptable, and need less substantiation. Provisional points often start with “it would seem that….” Or “from one angle this appears as….” This is to say, theory is always provisional, and declarative statements often create roadblocks in theoretical praxis. 2) Have some familiarity with the theorists’ political background, the conjuncture in which they were embedded, and be sure to examine how their work specifically crystallizes said conjuncture. For example, Walter Benjamin’s work is timeless, yet it obviously is embedded within the context of the rise of fascism. Obviously, in this case, that is a point of departure, not a point of conclusion. The point is that no theory can be dis-embedded from its context. 3) Engage the world around you. Theory is not disembodied knowledge. It will be helpful in writing this kind of essay to implicitly or explicitly connect it to the circumstances in which we are living at the moment, repeated crises in capitalism; Covid; climate catastrophe, the rise of fascism and so on. 4) Don’t use “I”. Theory is not autobiographical. If you want to say what you think, write “it would seem that….” or “the author believes….”. Topics: 1. Making reference to texts by Marx (and Engels), assigned and otherwise, does it make more sense to you to situate Marx as a sort of progressivist celebrant of modernity, as in the work of Berman? Or should Marxism/historical materialism be seen as explicitly anti-teleological as in the work of Benjamin, Lowy and Ellen Meiksins Wood. Please pay special attention to the Wood chapter on “teleology”. Recommended supplementary texts: Marx, Capital Volume One, Capital Volume Three, the Grundrisse, Critique of the Gotha Programme Engels, Anti-Duhring F. Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism 2. Compare the various conceptualizations of the communist/socialist project from your readings, from Benjamin’s visionary utopia to Wood’s transcendence of class society, from Berman’s promethean rise of a new humanity to Dean’s party-driven traditionalism. Make reference to other theorists of communist and socialist transformation, whether revolutionary or reformist. Recommended supplementary texts: Peter Hudis, Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism Leo Panitch, Transcending Pessimism Aaron Jaffe, Social Reproduction Theory and the Socialist Horizon 3. Compare and contrast the various theorists covered in the course, in particular Walter Benjamin, Michael Lowy, Marshall Berman and Perry Anderson, on the topic of modernity and the modernist project, making reference to specific conceptualizations of realism, modernism and post-modernism in cultural and aesthetic theory. Recommended Supplementary Texts: Perry Anderson, The Origin of Post-Modernity F. Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism JF Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism 4. Making use of Marx’s On the Jewish Question, Wood’s Democracy against Capitalism and Dean’s Communist Horizon, compare the connections the various theorists make between the “demos” or what Marx calls “political emancipation” and the broader project of communism or what Marx calls “human emancipation”. Make use of other texts that theorize communist transformation. Recommend Supplementary Texts: Hal Draper, “The Two Souls of Socialism” (pamphlet available at Marxists.Org) V.I. Lenin, What is to Be Done Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike Mao Zedong, On Contradiction Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844” (available at Marxists.Org)