Development and International Cooperation Studies

GIOVANNI RUOCCO
GIOVANNI RUOCCO

Students are expected to attain knowledge and critical understanding of the main lines of development of political thought of colonialism and the forms of construction of the idea of race over time.
These skills will be acquired also through class discussions.
The aim will be to develop:
- an ability to judge from a comparison of the main theories of race and critical historiography on the subject;
- communication skills, starting from classroom interaction with the teacher and fellow students;
- critical learning skills capable of combining knowledge and reasoning, in order to then be able to achieve autonomous thinking and judgement.

Knowledge prerequisites are not required. It performs a good preparatory function having followed and sustained the "History of political thought" exam in the three-year degree course.

"Thinking, constructing, classifying the 'other': the construction of race".
The course briefly reconstructs the contents of contemporary Western thought (16th-20th centuries), in the relationship with other peoples and cultures, analysing the influence of this relationship on self-representation of the global historical ‘mission’ of the West, as a legitimation of world colonial hegemony; extensively, it explores the historical construction of the racialisation of the ‘other’, from the early modern age, and through the dissemination of the doctrines of race between the 19th and 20th centuries, to the development of a critical historiography during the 20th century and up to the present.

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Attending students
(it's necessary to register for the course at the end of the first week of classes by sending an e-mail to the lecturer, indicating ‘Course registration’ in the subject line).

Attendance in the course must be constant. Few absences are admitted, to the minimum extent due to specific commitments. Punctuality and permanence until the end of each lesson is also fundamental.

Programme for attending students

1.Class notes and slides.
2. G. Ricotta, G. Ruocco, Pensare, classificare, costruire l'alterità. Percorsi di critica postcoloniale, Castelvecchi.


Non-attending students

They must study these texts:
1. G. Ricotta, G. Ruocco, Pensare, classificare, costruire l'alterità. Percorsi di critica postcoloniale, Castelvecchi
2. A book of your choice from the following: Enzo Traverso, La violenza nazista, il Mulino; George Mosse, Il razzismo in Europa. Dalle origini all’Olocausto, Laterza; Colette Guillaumin, L'ideologia razzista. Genesi e linguaggio attuale, il melangolo; Francisco Bethencourt, Razzismi, Dalle crociate al XXi secolo, il Mulino.
3.A book of your choice from the following: Frantz Fanon, I dannati della terra, Einaudi; Frantz Fanon, Pelle nera, maschere bianche. Il nero e l’altro, Marco Tropea (or Ets); Edward Said, Orientalismo, Feltrinelli; Tzvetan Todorov, La conquista dell’America. Il problema dell''altro', Einaudi; Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializzare l'Europa, Meltemi; Angela Davis, Donna, Razza e classe, Alegre; W.E.B. Du Bois, Sulla linea del colore, il Mulino; Cyril Lionel Robert James, I giacobini neri, Derive Approdi; Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Femminismo senza frontiere. Teoria, differenze, conflitti, ombre corte; Robert J.C. Young, Mitologie bianche: la scrittura della storia e l’Occidente, Meltemi.

Some historical texts can be a good introduction to the course:
Christopher A. Bayly, La nascita del mondo moderno 1780-1914, Einaudi; Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question, Theory, Knowledge, History, University of California; John H. Elliott, Imperi dell’Atlantico. America britannica e America spagnola 1492-1830, Torino, Einaudi; Sandro Mezzadra, Brette Neilson, Confini e frontiere: la moltiplicazione del lavoro nel mondo globale, Bologna, il Mulino; Herfried Münkler, Imperi. Il dominio del mondo dall’antica Roma agli Stati Uniti, Bologna, il Mulino; Anthony Pagden, Signori del mondo. Ideologie dell’Impero in Spagna, Gran Bretagna e Francia 1500-1800, il Mulino; Charles H. Parker, Relazioni globali nell’età moderna 1400-1800, il Mulino; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Mondi connessi, Carocci; Kenneth Pomeranz, La grande divergenza. La Cina, l’Europa e la nascita dell’economia mondiale moderna, il Mulino; Wolfgang Reinhard, Storia del colonialismo, Einaudi; Eric R. Wolf, L’Europa e i popoli senza storia, il Mulino; Akira Iriye e Jürgen Osterhammel, Storia del Mondo, Einaudi, 6 voll. Lorenzo Veracini, Colonialism. A Global History. Routledge

Teaching activities will be carried out through lectures and interventions by scholars.
The course provides one program for attending students, one for non-attending ones.

Attendance is not compulsory, but highly recommended

In final exam, the student have to demonstrate he acquired the principal elements of the course, that is critical knowledge of colonial historical and epistemic foundations of western political thought and of theories of races.

The interview, which lasts about 20-30 minutes, will take the form of an open stimulus and response oral test and will be based on four-five questions related to each part of the program.

For final evaluation, it's important the student's ability to reflect critically and study autonomously.

"How is the idea of progress formed during the modern age?"
"When did the idea of race develop and spread?"
"What is 'critical race theory'?"