Spring
2003

ISF100B

Based on material submitted by students and teachers of this class
Included are 12 Essay Questions. We will choose one of them for the final exam. You will have 3 hours during the final exam. We suggest that you prepare written outlines for your answers and support your argument with conceptual and empirical evidence.

1. Reich, Marcuse, Irigaray, W.E.B. Du Bois, Fanon and Cesaire have described psychic space as culturally and socially constructed. How does it affect individual accountability? And how does it relate to “individual thought?” Please use textual evidence in the construction of the concepts, whether you agree with these concepts or not.
   
2. Please discuss the status and role of women in the construction of psychic space in the texts of Freud, Reich, and Irigaray. When preparing your answers, please develop a typology of the notion of “woman” in these texts.
   
3. What are the political implications of Freud's social theories (i.e. the archaic legacy, the tri-partite soul, libido-object relations) and how did later theorists, such as Reich, Irigaray, and Marcuse appropriate these implications. What are their reactions and to which extent did they reinforce these political implications? Please use textual evidence in your answers.
   
4. Explain how Freud, Reich and Irigaray concentrated on particular social groups in their practices and theories in the area of psychoanalysis. How is their knowledge production on consciousness and the unconscious linked to their own historical epoch?
   
5. W.E.B. Du Bois underwent transformations in his theory. What was his original take on the link between oppression and ignorance? How did this view change as he himself became more knowledgeable on the basis of experiences?
   
6. What do Jung, Marcuse, Fanon, and Irigaray owe to Freud? How have each of these theorists made use of Freud’s conceptual framework and refined it?
   
7. What is the most significant aspect of Fanon’s work? What is the range of applicability of his conceptual framework to US society today? How would you refine his theory?
   
8. In this class we have reflected on the geopolitical dimensions of inner space. Fanon and Cesaire have been most instrumental in conceptualizing the psychic dimension of geopolitical inequality, injustice, and oppression. What is the promise of Fanon’s and Cesaire’s postcolonial theory in terms of a geopolitics of peace?
   
9. Please develop a theory of intellectuals with respect to colonialism. Are there communalities between northern and southern theorists with respect to “international rights?”
   
10. “Experience” is a fundamental concept in the Hegelian-Marxist tradition with respect to the concept of the possibility of legal-social change. What is the status of the concept of experience in Freud, Marcuse, Irigaray, Du Bois, and Fanon?
    
11. Colonialism has been one of the dominant themes of discussion. Discuss the evolution of the concepts of power and domination from Nietzsche to Fanon. How did Irigaray and Du Bois operate with these concepts as opposed to Nietzsche and Freud? What is the status of the individual, the collective or the elites in these theories?
    
12. Discuss the notion, fact, institution, and organization of religion in relation to psychoanalysis.