Aims

This module aims:
-To introduce students to a range of left wing thought from the German tradition and the socio-political, cultural and philosophical contexts in which this was produced.
-To encourage students to critique German thought and to consider the implications it might have for our lives today.
-To develop students’ written and analytical skills and to facilitate the presentation of their ideas to academic and non-academic audiences in written and creative work.

Outline Of Syllabus

This module begins with a series of questions: How can we create a society that is founded on freedom and equality? How might we resist state oppression? What alternatives exist to the capitalist status quo? What role can students play in resisting or overthrowing the political order? In short, what is to be done?

It is questions like these that were proposed by a broad range of German intellectuals and philosophers. From stalwarts of the left like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, to revolutionary figures like Rosa Luxemburg and fringe terrorist organisations like the Rote Armee Fraktion, German culture has a strong tradition of radical thinkers and political actors. This module is your opportunity to engage directly with these thinkers and their ideas.

We will begin with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel's "The Communist Manifesto" (1848) and work through pivotal thinkers from the early decades of the twentieth century (Rosa Luxemburg, Walter Benjamin). We will then look at responses to totalitarianism (Hannah Arendt) and new directions in left-wing thinking in the 1960s before moving into the twenty-first century to consider thinkers responding to our own times and the problems facing the world today (Byung-Chul Han).

You will be introduced to some of the major left wing thinkers and their ideas in lectures, which will provide information on the social, political and intellectual contexts in which thinkers and philosophers developed their ideas. In seminars, you will work closely with primary texts: radical manifestos, revolutionary pamphlets and other materials that call for the status quo to be overturned. You will critique the ideas contained in these texts, consider the influence that they had historically, and interrogate whether they still carry a message for us today.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Lectures will introduce students to the thinkers/philosophers each week and will provide cultural, socio-political and intellectual background information so students can situate the primary texts in their contemporary contexts (ILOs 1, 2).

Seminars will engage students directly with the primary texts and encourage them to think critically about the ideas they contain. Work will be a mixture of independent, small-group and class work and discussions. Students will be encouraged to consider the relevance of these texts for our present-day experience (ILOs 3, 4, 5; SOs 1, 2, 3)

Workshops are designed to introduce students to more creative engagements with these ideas (please see assessment information below). These will be informative and practical; students will have the chance to develop skills tied directly to their assessments. (ILOs 2, 3, 4, 5; SOs 4, 5)

Guided independent study will prepare students for the above through materials provided on canvas. (SOs 1, 2)

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

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Assessment One: Critical Commentary 50% (1750-2000 words)**

Students will be asked to write a critical commentary responding to an extract from one of the set texts. This will engage their close reading and academic writing skills. It asks them to demonstrate and appraise a short extract, and situate this in relation to the broader text and intellectual tradition being explored in the module. (ILOs 1, 2, 3, 5; SOs 1, 2, 3).

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Assessment Two: Zine and reflective response 50% (zine: 4 x a5 pages; reflective response: 1750-2000 words)**

This assessment asks students to consider the implications that one (or more) of the thinkers studied in the module has for their contemporary experience. This takes two forms.

First, students will be asked to produce a short zine in which they explore the ideas, message and relevance of a chosen text in relation to a contemporary topic of their choosing (e.g. poverty, neo-fascism, the climate crisis, the current crisis in UK universities, etc.). the zine will be 4 x a5 pages long (i.e. one a4 sheet folded into a booklet). (ILOs 3, 4, 5; SOs 3, 4)

This creative task is linked to counter-cultural traditions that encourage ‘a personalised remixing of ideas’ by the student (Brown et al. 2021). As a creative, material artefact, zines ‘position learners not as consumers of knowledge, but as critics, creators, and crucially, experts in their own communities of knowledge’ (ibid). Students will be introduced to zines and their production through a series of workshops aimed at developing their ideas creatively and critically. These will be incorporated into the teaching of the module so students are fully supported in this activity.

The second part of the assessment, a reflective response, asks students to reflect critically on the production of their zine, outline the main ideas that they explore in it and to think critically about the production of the assessment. Students will be provided with a template and list of questions to guide their response. (ILOs 3, 4, 5; SOs 3, 5)

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Taken as a whole, the assessment model for this module is designed to:
a) resist the commodification of knowledge-production within the neoliberal university,
b) encourage critical and creative engagement with primary materials and their contemporary relevance,
c) resist generative AI as a means of undercutting the development of knowledge.