Social Thought & Polic. Econ 491H - STPEC Focus Seminar I

STPEC 391H Self-Transformation and Liberation Struggles: This course is focused on how personal liberation can be facilitated within communities. The course is about systems of domination that become internalized, and, importantly, how such internalized domination can be transformed. Often self-transformation is viewed as an individual matter (the neoliberal story) or, in another extreme, as an unimportant, impossible or reactionary deviation from revolutionary change. While Foucault suggested ?self-care? as a form of resistance to dominant regimes, others have emphasized how self-care as a concept has been co-opted by the market as a tool for profit. At the same time, abstract macro systems of oppression such as race, sexuality, gender or class have a real effect on our understanding of ourselves. Put simply, it seems hard to imagine a radical social change without a parallel change of individuals and communities. In this course students will choose their own focus on particular strategies for radical self-care (e.g., social forms of therapy, cultural resistance, building of radical communities, etc.), thematic issues (e.g., trauma treatment, cognitive liberation, mindfulness, queering relationships, etc.), within historical or contemporary contexts. The course is based on active participation through text seminars, movies, student presentations and the writing of course papers.