Syllabus
Week 1 (3. 10. 2023) The End of Post-Communism?
Optional reading: Vojtěch Šeliga, “S prohrou Babiše skončí postkomunismus, řekl Lacina. Juchelka se mu vysmál do obličeje” (https://cnn.iprima.cz/prohra-babise-bude-konec-postkomunismu-rika-lacina-jako-zeman-a-klaus-ma-vazby-na-rusko-193474) This short article is only optional, for Czech readers. In class we’ll discuss the article’s content.
Week 2 (10. 10.) Yet Another Light that Failed?
Reading: Selections from Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes, The Light That Failed: A Reckoning
Week 3 (17. 10.) The End of History I
Reading: Selections from Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
Week 4 (24. 10.) The End of History II
Reading: Prozorov, The Ethics of Postcommunism, ch. 1, “Universal Postcommunism: Kojève and Agamben”
Week 5 (31. 10.) The Grand New Idea I: Civil Society
Reading: Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty, chs. 1, 24, and 28
Week 6 (31. 10.) The Grand New Idea II: Moral (Anti-)Politics
Reading: Selections from Václav Havel, The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice
Week 7 (7. 11.) The Other Side of Civil Society
Reading: Veronika Stoyanova, “The Concept of Civil Society during the ‘Transition’”
Week 8 (14. 11.) The Other Side of Morality
Reading: Georgi Medarov, “The Roots of the Moralization of Politics in Post-1989 Bulgaria and What It Means for the Left”
Week 9 (21. 11.) The Wild East and the Ideal of “Transition”
Reading: Selections from Lea Ypi, Free
Week 10 (28. 11.) The Political Economy of Shock Therapy
Reading: Ghodsee and Orenstein, Taking Stock of Shock, ch. 4, “Counternarratives of Catastrophe”
Week 11 (5. 12.) Old Elites, New Elites
Reading: Eyal, et al., Making Capitalism without Capitalists, ch. 2, “The Second Bildungsbürgertum”
Week 12 (12. 12.) The East Needs Help
Reading: Boris Buden, “Children of Postcommunism” Note: For readers of German, Buden’s full book was originally published as Die Zone des Übergangs: Vom Ende des Postkommunismus. For readers of Czech, the book has been translated as Konec postkomunismu?
Week 13 (19. 12.) The East Still Isn’t West
Reading: Selections from Ivan Kalmar, White but Not Quite
Week 14 (9. 1. 2024): Informal meeting
No reading this week. We’ll meet after hours for an open discussion (time and place TBA)
Annotation
In the years following the Communist Party’s loss of monopoly power in Central and Eastern Europe, a new social, political, and cultural order came into being, known colloquially as “post-socialism” or “post-communism.” Entirely new ways of organizing the economy, political power, and expressive culture not only became dominant, but came to appear natural, unquestionable, justified by the apparent impossibility or illegitimacy of doing things any other way. Eventually the homogeneity of legitimate approaches began to break down, and some commentators have suggested that the post-communist period had already ended, giving way to something new.
But the post-communist legacy continues to affect our present, and the types of thought cultivated by post-communism continue to influence contemporary society and politics. In this course we will examine and problematize some of those types of thought – the tenets of what I’ve called “post-communist reason” – as we attempt to understand the phenomenon of post-communism and the open question of what comes after it.