The course introduces students into the ideas of the unorthodox Marxian thinkers of the Frankfurt School. Generally regarded as e an undogmatic movement in Marxist theory, thinkers of the Frankfurt School developed Critical Theory which seeks to critically examine capitalist society, while giving up Marx's idea of proletarian revolution. Students will encounter a variety of texts of the leading figures of the School: Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, and Axel Honneth. Since these philosophers were convinced that late capitalist society can only be understood in an interdisciplinary approach, the course will also have interdisciplinary character with discussions in social theory, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies.

Learning outcomes: By the end of this course, students will have gained a good grounding in the critical theory of Frankfurt School as well as the ability to see their virtues and shortcomings. The course endeavors to provide a better understanding of the complex problems discussed in the writings of Critical Theory such as reification, culture industry, critical theory, and emancipation, while it also offers an up-to-date overview of the Western development of Marxism within the context of Continental Philosophy in the 20th century. Students will also have become more skilled readers of difficult, older texts. They will have further developed their argumentation and writing skills and become better able to articulate their own positions on the key questions.

This course aims to introduce the new trends in French philosophy in order to show an ecological shift, important in French philosophy at least since Bergson. This ecological shift allows us to insist on the fruitfulness of the intellectual links between France and Brazil, especially between our two institutions (the department of Philosophy of University Paris Nanterre and The Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas of the Universidade de São Paulo (FFLCH/USP) in order to transform our conception of subjectivity, and show important links between philosophy and social sciences, in particular anthropology but also philosophy of technology and politics (feminism, postcolonial studies). In particular, Viveiros de Castro's Cannibal Metaphysics plays an important role, opening methodological epistemology to new understanding of relations among different cultures, and between human and non human. Approching the question of intelligibility as non eurocentred, reconsidering logos without opposing it to muthos leads us towards a new philosophy of « history » engaging the question of human evolution not as teleological progress but as rhizomatic multiplicities.

The task to define new subjectivities in the age of the anthropocene allows us to insist on an antiphenomenological trend in French philosophy, from Bergson to Deleuze, including interesting and mostly unknown thinkers, even in France, such as Gilbert Simondon, who has been recently translated into Brazilian, and Raymond Ruyer, who has been recently translated for the first time into English. While building on the results of my latest book, Artmachine : Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, I would like to take the discussion further and show a real ecological shift in metaphysics as institutional philosophy meets the results of anthropology (especially Viveiros de Castro, who had a strong impact in France) but also of feminist (Gayle Rubin, Donna Haraway) and decolonial studies (Fanon, Glissant, Mmembe). 

The problem is to deconstruct the great Eurocentric narrative of metaphysics as Western in order to define mutant and plural subjectivities, including human and non-human, living and technical agents. This leads to a new definition of technology aswell as to a new understanding of the relationship between agency, subjectivity, art (as territorial expession) and politics. The case of cinema will be examined as crucial to understand collectiv but also technical modes of subjectivation, leading us from industrial cinema to digital networking.

O objetivo do seminário é ilustrar e discutir a divulgação e as várias formas do impacto cultural dos contos de fadas clássicos e sua surpreendente capacidade de viajar através do tempo e do espaço. A análise será centrada no conto de Cinderela, uma vez que oferece um material particularmente rico e multicamadas para desenvolver o complexo discurso interdisciplinar relacionado a este tópico. O curso é articulado em 8 unidades destinadas a cursos de duas semanas.

Language of the seminar: French (but the teacher understands Portuguese).

A number of recent works in the social sciences are interested in self-management practices and the growing demand for democratic horizontality in organizations and social movements. Some of these works question a possible complicity between neoliberal governmentality and self-management experiences. Others, on the contrary, affirm that such experiences were considered by the neoliberal doctrinaires as much more dangerous for their project than the defense of the achievements of the social state.

This seminar will discuss these debates, but will also try to show the original and singular contribution of institutional analysis to these issues, by looking at the way in which movements in the field of health and education, such as anti-psychiatry, institutional psychotherapy, and a whole range of alternative pedagogical experiments since the 1960s, have also contributed to redefining them, in Europe but also elsewhere. In this perspective, it is a continuation of the seminar "Philosophical anthropology, neoliberalism, and politics" that I taught at the FFLCH summer school last year. It will be a matter of questioning a whole set of social and political experiences, which can be defined as self-management and which have, for this reason, participated in the definition of "democratic institutions"; in a radical and non-representative sense.

1. Develop capacities of professionals with multi-disciplinary knowledge about the water situation in the Middle East. 

2- Develop knowledge about water resources and challenges facing different states in the ME

3. Undertand the conflict over water in Palestine. 

3- Contribute to the production of graduates who could work as water managers in different organizations (governmental, non-governmental, and private sector).

In conjunction with a book I am currently writing, the course seeks to develop the concept of the "neo-liberal personality" thorugh a close examination of three bodies of literature:

1. Neoliberalism; 2. Populism; and, 3. Critical social psychology

The course provides a historical account and structural analysis of neo-liberal reason. It also offers an examination of various accounts of the populist backlash to it. Next, we look at the most significant social-psychological approaches to authoritarianism with a view to developing a theoretical account of the neo-liberal personality type that will better explain the rise of authoritarian populism.