https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/GENS5726?type=COREAmidst the intensifying radical critique ofheteropatriarchy, together with its traditional sexual mores, and the violent conservativebacklash that follows it, the concept of desire comes yet again asfundamentally contentious and potentially politically disruptive. In thiscourse, we will unpack the multiple meanings of desire and its politicalimplications by looking into the debates and conceptualizations of this idea inthe 20th and 21st centuries. Desire will be taken in its broadest sense and itsmultiplicity: as a sexual, erotic, and romantic force; as an individual, innate,sometimes anti-social feeling, as well as a collective bond; as bothconsumerist and transgressive, etc. The course is grounded in psychoanalysis,queer and feminist theory, and critical race theory. Our discussion of desire,by historical necessity, will mostly be tied to the tradition of continentalthought, but we will also look into the ways desire has been understood outsideof the global North/West, particularly in order to critique the colonial andracial assumptions inherent to the history of Western thought as such, which,of course, includes the very topic of desire as well. In addition to thereading list that consists of theoretical takes on desire, we will engage withliterary fiction and films. Finally, as the outcome of the somewhat historicaloverview of the concept of desire and its politics, we will address some of themost recent questions in the politics of desire, such as consent, polyamory, sexwork, kinks, consumerist desire, racialized/racist desire.