Mirror Sites:
CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: June 6, 2001
Latest update: October 25, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

Transforming Discourse Readings
Week of October 22, 2001: Week 9

• Online Readings:
  • On the War by Stanley Hoffman.
  • More up soon.

• Hardcopy Readings:

  Readings in Social Theory, ed. by James Farganis:

  • Up soon.

• Some Suggested Measures of Learning:

  Comment on one of the following topics, or do something of your own choosing.

  1. Outline the arguments put forth by Professor Hoffman in On the War.

     Consider the outline I started on the teaching essay:

     In the interest of developing our skills at reasoned argument, follow the steps of the argument:

     • in the US the question
       • largely dismissed - example nation-state patriotism and revenge
       • or self-serving, simplistic, and summary - envy of our good qualities

Theoretical Concepts You Should Know:

1. cultural subversion
2. political domination
3. economic subjection

4. hegemony

   1. What does Professor Hoffman mean by "benign American hegemony?
      • Consider patriotism and nation-state solidarity.
      • Consider spiritual unease and intolerance for "other religions" or "no religion."
      • Consider the comments of some of our students from Soka University Japan that perhaps there is much they must learn about the Middle East.

5. Analysis of Argument

   In the interest of developing our skills at reasoned argument, follow the steps of the argument:

   • in the US the question
     • largely dismissed - example nation-state patriotism and revenge
     • or self-serving, simplistic, and summary - envy of our good qualities

     Now you take over from here and fill in the argument. Then link it conceptually to what we are studying:

     • In transformative discourse, consider how the dominant discourse draws on the hidden assumptions that one people should serve another, and how easy it is to be complicit by denying that underlying assumption.

     More soon . . . . October 25, 2001. jeanne