GU4732: Matters of Life/Death | D. Rubenstien

Comparative Literature
Undergraduate and Graduate Seminar
Th 4:10-6PM

The imbricated crises of a global pandemic and the legacies of structural anti-Black racism necessitate reflection, at once political and philosophic. One might argue that they reframe twentieth century French traditions of thought as a sustained critical reflection on le vivant (life); the way society classifies and treats its dead, its “living dead” or excluded members; the political economy of death and life management; death sentences (both legal and literary.) In the twenty first century, Black feminist thought addresses the ecological catastrophe of the pandemic and the resultant unequal distribution of life and death, pressuring what is at stake under the philosopheme of the “human.” This seminar is structured as a conversation between representative thinkers from each “tradition.” 

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