Learning outcomes

The course aims at introducing and discussing some of the major issues concerning political philosophy, especially those related to the contemporary global challenges that interest this field of research.

Program

Prerequisites: Basic knowledge in the History of Philosophy

Content of course: On Violence: a history of the concept.
The course aims at analyzing, through the reading of some major classics of the history of political thought, the concept of violence and its justification within political action. How and to which extent has violence been considered a necessary aspect of power? How and to which extent can we, on the basis of some Arendtian suggestions, explicit a critique of violence based on a radically new notion of political power? To answer these, and many other questions students are requested to read thoroughly some of the most influential thinkers of violence of the 20th century. The course will also address the question of violence as related to ‘race’ and ‘colonization’. Through the lens of the distinction between the violence of the native against the settler and the violence of the settler against the native as it has been theorized by Hannah Arendt and Franz Fanon, it will open the way to a discussion of the relationship between the colonial (European) racialization of political identities in central and eastern Africa, and post-colonial (African) definitions of citizenship.

Texts (for students attending the course):
Karl Marx, La cosiddetta accumulazione originaria in Il Capitale, Editori Riuniti, Roma 1989, I, VII, ch. 24, pp. 777-826, (photocopies available at copisteria ‘La Rapida’).
Frantz Fanon, I dannati della terra, Einaudi, Torino 2007
Hannah Arendt, Sulla violenza, Guanda Milano 2008
Mahmood Mandami, "Race and Ethnicity as Political Identities in the African Context", in Keywords: Identity, New York, Other Press 2004, pp. 3-23 (pdf available on the Pofessor’s web site).
Mamdani, Mahmood (2001) "The Racialization of the Hutu/Tutsie Difference under Colonialism", in When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, pp. 76-102 (pdf available on the Pofessor’s web site).
Olivia Guaraldo (a cura di), Il Novecento di Hannah Arendt. Un lessico politico, ombre corte, Verona 2008.

Texts (for students not attending the course)
Karl Marx, La cosiddetta accumulazione originaria in Il Capitale, Editori Riuniti, Roma 1989, I, VII, ch. 24, pp. 777-826.
Georges Sorel, Riflessioni sulla violenza, in Scritti politici, UTET, Torino 2006, pp. 83-421.
Frantz Fanon, I dannati della terra, Einaudi, Torino 2007
Hannah Arendt, Sulla violenza, Guanda Milano 2008.
Olivia Guaraldo (a cura di), Il Novecento di Hannah Arendt. Un lessico politico, Verona, ombre corte 2008.

Theaching methods: Lectures based on reading, interpretation and discussion of the texts.

Examination Methods

Oral examination