syllabus
MM Umphrey Office hours:
207 Clark Wednesday 1-3 and by appointment
x 8206
LAW, SPEECH AND THE POLITICS OF FREEDOM
LJST 30
Spring 2008
In the United States, the idea of free speech is held to be both a political and moral ideal. The First Amendment makes freedom of speech a centerpiece of liberal democratic values and processes, and thus of American identity itself. But what, precisely, do we mean when we link the ideas of freedom and speech? What kinds of speech, and what kinds of freedom, are implicated in that linkage? Correlatively, what does it mean to “censor”? This course will approach the idea of “free speech” through the lens of linguistic and cultural theory, pushing back against the most commonly held views about what free speech is and what it means. Conceptualizing speech as a kind of act and the speaking self as opaque and sometimes irrational, we will put into question certain fundamental assumptions that undergird First Amendment doctrine, assumptions that misunderstand what speech is and what it does even as, or perhaps because, they offer a strong and problematic account of the liberal self in relation to the state. As we will see, the censorship of dangerous, threatening, or “low-value” ideas – both by the state and by others – paradoxically silences and produces speech at the same time, both about the censored ideas and about speech itself and its relation to freedom.
Course requirements (see handout for specifics)
1. Speaking in class on a current event
2. Two take-home papers
3. One research project
Required texts
JL Austin, How to Do Things with Words
Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1
Catharine MacKinnon, Only Words
Judith Butler, Excitable Speech
Multilith available at the LJST office, 208 Clark House
Honor Code: I maintain an honor code in all my classes. See accompanying handout.
SYLLABUS
“Free speech”
JS Mill, “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion”
Habermas, “Social Structures of the Public Sphere”
JB White, “Speech in the Empire”
Speech Acts and their Infelicities
JL Austin, How to Do Things with Words (excerpts)
Tracy v. Illinois
New York Times v. Sullivan
Repression and Production
Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1
Confession and Silence
Freud, Dora
Brewer v. Williams
Miranda v. Arizona
Constable, “Brave New Words: The Miranda Warning as Speech Act”
Protest
Plato, The Republic, book 10 (excerpt)
Foucault, Fearless Speech (excerpts)
King, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
Meiklejohn, Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government (excerpts)
Schenck v United States
Abrams v United States
Texas v Johnson
Morse v Frederick
Colbert parody
The Obscene and Indecent
United States v One Book Called Ulysses
Miller v. California
NEA v. Finley, 524 US 569 (1998)
Dubin, “The Trials of Robert Mapplethorpe”
Documents from Culture Wars
Speech and Pain
Scarry, from The Body in Pain
MacKinnon, Only Words
RAV v St. Paul
Nielson, “Experiencing Offensive Public Speech”
Harris v Forklift Systems
Butler, Excitable Speech
US v. Thomasson
Free Speech and Liberal Dreams
Brown, “Freedom’s Silences”
Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance”
Fish, “There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too”