Topics in Literary Theory and History: Theory and Practice of Leaderlessness

Source: https://german.princeton.edu/whats-on/courses/graduate/2025-26-spring/ger-532 Parent: https://german.princeton.edu/whats-on/courses/current?t=graduate

GER 532

Topics in Literary Theory and History: Theory and Practice of Leaderlessness

Spring 2026

Th

1:20p - 4:10p

https://registrar.princeton.edu/course-offerings/course-details?term=1264&courseid=016788

This seminar reflects on the collapse of leadership (Benjamin, Jelinek, Labatut) and on the question of what political action might look like that does not take the classic, centralized form of leadership. We find inspiration in German moments of counter-history (the Peasant Wars, Council Republics, environmental movement), in anarchist writing (Landauer, Graeber, Robinson), in the pedagogical and psychoanalytical setting (Rancière, Walser, Bion), in small organizations approaches to worker’s rights, housework and childcare, queer rights (Sander, Federici, Rackete), and finally in the arts of leaderlessness. (Romanticism, Dickinson, Melville). Seminar discussions in English.

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