On Arendt
1. ‘Those who aspire to totalitarian domination must liquidate all spontaneity’ (Hannah Arendt). Why, in Arendt’s view, is spontaneity the primary target of totalitarian terror?
2. Arendt is often criticised for her elitist view of politics. What is the basis of this criticism and is it justified?
3. Arendt suggests that we do not need a wicked heart to cause great evil. It is enough that we ‘fail to think’. What does she mean by ‘thoughtlessness’ and how far does her thesis about the banality of evil go towards explaining the crimes of totalitarianism?
On Foucault
4. Foucault rose to prominence as a political theorist on the basis of his radical new insights into the workings of modern power. How does “disciplinary power” differ from “sovereign power” and how would one go about resisting such power?
5. At first glance “bio-power” – power exercised over the life of the population – seems relatively benign. Does Foucault give us any reason to be fearful of this kind of power?
6. In his late writings, Foucault began to focus his attention on practices of self-formation in which one becomes a subject for oneself. What does this ‘work on the self’ entail and why does Foucault refer to it as a practice of freedom?
On Derrida
7. Critics have suggested that deconstruction is a conservative mode of critique because it is content to set the text against itself, undoing it from within by exposing it as a play of contradictions. Is this a fair reading of the meaning and significance of Derrida’s frequent insistence that deconstruction ‘works from the inside’?
8. ‘An unconditional hospitality is to be sure, practically impossible to live….but without at least the thought of this pure, unconditional hospitality itself, we would have no concept of hospitality in general’ (Jacques Derrida). What is hospitality and why does Derrida think it so important a political and ethical idea?
9. “To err is human, to forgive divine” (Alexander Pope). Does Derrida’s ideal of pure, unconditional forgiveness reach so far that it stretches beyond possibility and beyond humanity altogether?