Insiders, Outsiders and the Perspective of Political Criticism
Who is best situated to theorize about and criticize a society? an insider or an outsider? Can a foreigner or a newcomer be a good lawgiver in a society that they are not intimately familiar with? Does being an exile rob one of a perspective? Or does distance illuminate flaws in society that one would not have noticed otherwise? This selective survey of major texts in the history of western political thought will explore these questions and others, focusing on the role of the political theorist as a spectator and as a critic of society. How do different thinkers establish their impartiality? Does it require abandoning one’s standpoint? Is it identical to being a “voice from nowhere”?
Most of the thinkers that we will read negotiated at least two identities, two loyalties, or two places, with one foot in and one foot outside of the political context about which they wrote. To give a few examples: Aristotle was a foreigner in Athens, Machiavelli an exile who was banned from political office in Florence, Arendt was a stateless exile who fled Nazi Germany and wrote most of her political works after migrating to the US. Fanon and Beauvoir were both foreigners in their own societies—both describe in their writings the immense pain and psychological damage that result from their striving to be included—to be insiders—in societies that nevertheless forcefully and violently rejected and excluded them because of their race or gender.
How did the doubling of place and identity of all these thinkers affect their perspective and their political insight? And what do they have to say about the conditions that enable political critique? In sum: what are the worldly (i.e., cultural, institutional, economic, political) conditions of political theory?
This is a reading and writing intensive course. Students are responsible for all of the assigned reading as well as active participation in discussion sections, two short papers, and two exams.