This course examines the crisis of European subjectivity in the wake of WWII and the Holocaust. Such a crisis implicates not merely the concepts of Europe and the subject, but the very concept of the concept and thus entails a transformation of thought itself. Topics include crises of the subject and the human; the question of technology; the Franco-German relation; the Cold War; decolonization; exile and emigration; essay, aphorism, and lecture as anti-systematic modes. We will do intensive readings of texts from seven authors: Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Maurice Blanchot, Paul Celan, Franz Fanon, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Lacan.

Sample Reading

Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism

Martin Heidegger The Question Concerning Technology

Jacques Lacan The Mirror Stage

Maurice Blanchot Death Sentence

Theodor Adorno Minima Moralia

Frantz Fanon The Wretched of the Earth 

Paul Celan The Meridian; selected poems