7/28/2019 HIS6445_SYLLABUS_2013

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/his6445syllabus2013 1/4

Thurner/HIS6445/2013 1

HIS 6445

Postcolonial Theories

Dr. Mark Thurner

Department of History

University of Florida

Spring 2013

HIS 6445 is concerned with the historical emergence of post-structural, postcolonial, and

subaltern critical thought. As a graduate seminar, we will be concerned with the practical

implications of this heterogeneous body of critical thought for our own work.

Required textbooks

There are eight (8) required books and several articles, as follows:

1) Edward Said, Orientalism, (Vintage, 1979; or second, Penguin, 2003).

2) Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Spivak, (Johns Hopkins, 1998).

3) Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader (ed. Paul Rabinow), (Vintage, 1984).

4) Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies, (Oxford, 1988).

5) Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, (Routledge Classics, 2004).

6) Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference,

(Princeton, 2000 or 2007).

7) Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony, (California, 2001).

8) Mark Thurner and Andres Guerrero, eds., After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas, (Duke, 2003).

On-line digital copies of required articles and chapters will be placed on the UF Libraries Course

Reserve webpage for this course. For a list of these articles, marked RSV for “Reserve Item,” see

“Topical Outline” below. 

Evaluation of Performance

33% Seminar participation*

 – weekly discussion & critical engagement

 – workshop presentation33% Reaction papers**

 – 4 (four) critical reviews, one for each unit, 4-6 pages each

33% Final paper**

 – 15-25 page essay on a topic to be selected in consultation with the instructor 

7/28/2019 HIS6445_SYLLABUS_2013

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/his6445syllabus2013 2/4

Thurner/HIS6445/2013 2

Topical Outline of Seminar 

Unit 1: Basic Concepts and Approaches: Intellectual History of Crisis

The modern concept of “crisis” 

Conceptual History versus the History of Ideas

What is a concept? What is a sign?

The crisis of the Old Regime, or Revolution and Crisis

Marxism and Crisis

The Crisis of Crisis or “post-crisis” 

The prefix “post” 

As flag and as “double inscription” 

As sign of the Crisis of Crisis

“Post” and “modern” 

“Post” and “structuralism” 

“Post” and “colonialism” 

“Post” and “history” or “historicism” 

Required Readings for Unit 1:

RSV Reinhart Koselleck, “Some Questions Regarding the Conceptual History of Crisis,” in The

 Practice of Conceptual History, (Stanford, 2002), pp. 237-247.

RSV Reinhart Koselleck , “Crisis, Consciousness, and Historical Construction (Rousseau,

Diderot, Raynal, Paine),” in Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern

Society, (MIT, 1989), pp. 158-189.

RSV Elias Jose Palti, “The Problem of „Misplaced Ideas‟ Revisited: Beyond the „History of 

Ideas‟ in Latin America,”  Journal of the History of Ideas 67:1 (January 2006), pp. 149-179

RSV Elias Jose Palti, “Poststructuralist Marxism and the „Experience of Disaster.‟ On Alain

Badiou‟s Theory of the (Non-)Subject,” The European Legacy, 8:4 (2003), pp. 459-480.

Mark Thurner , “After Spanish Rule: Writing Another After,” in Thurner and Guerrero, eds.,

 After Spanish Rule, (Duke, 2003), pp. 12-57.

Unit 2: Subaltern Studies

Guha‟s Foundational Gesture 

Gramsci in translation

History on trial

Feminism and the Critique of the Subject

7/28/2019 HIS6445_SYLLABUS_2013

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/his6445syllabus2013 3/4

7/28/2019 HIS6445_SYLLABUS_2013

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/his6445syllabus2013 4/4

Thurner/HIS6445/2013 4

RSV Simon Gikandi, “Poststructuralism and Postcolonial Discourse,” in Lazarus, Neil, ed., The

Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies, (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 97-119.

Unit 4: History after Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial Turn

Chakrabarty‟s critique of historicism: Europe as History

Historical difference and theory

South-South conversations

Genealogies of empire and nation

Postcolonial nations and postnational colonials

Required Readings for Unit 4:

Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference,

(Princeton, 2000).

Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony, (California, 2001).

RSV Frederic Cooper, “Postcolonial Studies and the Study of History,” in Ania Loomba, et. al.,

 Postcolonial Studies and Beyond , (Duke, 2005), pp. 401-422.

Mark Thurner and Andres Guerrero, eds., After Spanish Rule, (Duke, 2003).

Unit 5: Workshop

Student Presentations of Working Papers

ADDENDA