“Capitalism is not an economic system; it is not a social system; it is a way of organizing nature” – Jason

W. Moore

“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” - Frederic Jameson Instructor: Kyle Sittig

Email: sittigky@msu.edu (Please give me 24 hours to reply)

Office Hours: Friday 2-4 or by appointment on zoom.

Course Description:

The most recent reports from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) are clear. Without an immediate and substantive reduction in carbon emissions, the planet will become    virtually uninhabitable in our lifetime. Despite these warnings, a politics of “business as usual” dominates. Some of the parties in power insist they “believe in science”, while carrying on        ecologically destructive policies. Some put their faith in speculative technologies that can          mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Others deny the problem altogether.

Capitalism appears to us like nature. Individualism and the endless drive for accumulation, at the expense of the natural world feel inevitable. We are told, in the words of Margaret Thatcher, that there is “no alternative” to the current social arrangement.

This course will introduce you to an emerging discourse examining the relationship between     ecological and capitalist crises. We will reexamine common assumptions about our relationship to nature that pose it as “separate” or “out there,” independent of society. We will examine how social systems are always ecologically situated. Through our reintegration of ecology into our   analysis of capitalist social relations, we will think about how scientific communication is made political, how politics is made natural, and how activists on the ground have integrated these     threads into anti-capitalist struggles in a warming world.

A Note on Politics:

This is a political course, investigating discussions of climate change and environmentalism that have emerged in leftist spaces. You are not required to agree with the perspectives presented to  you. I only ask that you take them on their own terms, in good faith, and read them charitably.

Learning Goals:

- Understand how dominant ideologies are laundered through scientific communication and strategy.

- Learn to apply theoretically complex work on our social/natural relationships into media analysis.

- Challenge our core assumptions about how we are placed in the world ecologically.

- Think through how identities of class, race, gender, nation, etc are ecologically situated.

A Typical Week in this Class

I will run this class on a Monday to Sunday system. Each Monday you will log in and watch a  short video from myself that covers the content for the week. Some of the readings are difficult, so I aim to use these short videos to help you focus your reading. I will also address things that are popping up in your assignments.

You will have until Sunday at 11:59 PM to complete the readings, a discussion board post, and a response to a classmate’s post. On week’s 4 and 6 you will also have papers due.

I would prefer you work through the course material synchronously, rather than working ahead. This class should be an ongoing discussion between you, your classmates, and me. As such, I    would like us to be sitting with the weekly concepts, rather than rushing through them.

Readings:

Each week you will find readings under the content tab. Readings will range from 30-50 pages a week. If you only read on weekdays, that’s 10 pages a day on the high end (not so bad!). You     will be asked to ground your weekly discussion posts in concepts from the readings. All texts    will be provided by me through d2l. No books are required for this course.

Late Work:

All late work will be penalized 10 percent of a grade per day late. If you need an extension, please ask me BEFORE the due date. I am very flexible.

Grades:

This class will use a point system for grades. Every assignment will carry a point value that goes toward 100 possible points. The grade breakdown is as follows:

Discussion Boards (25 points)

Each week, you will turn in a 300-500 word discussion post based on the week’s

reading/content. My aim is to give you a lot of freedom in these discussions, but they must tie    back to the readings. I will provide weekly prompts to help you get started. Each post is worth 5 points. Since there are 6 weeks, I will drop your lowest score.

Your discussion posts will be thesis driven and mirror the type of writing I want you to do in     your longer papers. The ideas in these don’t have to be super clean or concrete, however, they    should use evidence from the text to contribute to an argument or overall point. Due Sundays at

11:59 PM

Participation (10 Points)

This is an online, asynchronous course. So it is hard to gage participation. But in humanities      courses it is important that we talk to each other. I will grade your participation based on your   responses to your classmate’s discussion posts. These responses will be 100-150 words and will

be worth 2 points each. Due Sundays at 11:59

Midterm Paper (25 points)

Your midterm will ask you to find an article on climate/politics in a popular publication and analyze it from the perspective of course readings. More details to come. (4-5 pages)           Final Paper (40 points)

The final paper is a more conventional argumentative essay, drawing from in-class sources (5-7 pages).

Academic Integrity:

In accordance with MSU’s policies on “Protection of Scholarship and Grades” and “Integrity of Scholarship and Grades,” students are expected to honor principles of truth and honesty in their  academic work. Academic honesty entails, among other things, that students will not plagiarize.  This means (1) students will not submit someone else’s work as their own, nor will they hand in a paper copied from the web or another published source. Academic honesty also means students (2) will not knowingly permit another student to copy and submit their work as that student’s      own and (3) will not use unacknowledged quotations or paraphrases as part of their work. As      provided by university policy, such academic dishonesty or plagiarism may be penalized by a     failing grade on the assignment OR for the course. Failure in a course as a result of academic      dishonesty will also result in written notification to the student’s academic dean of the

circumstances. Additional discussion of academic integrity is available on the Ombudsman’s webpage at https://www.msu.edu/~ombud/academic-integrity/index.html.

Accommodations:

Michigan State University is committed to providing equal opportunity for participation in all     programs, services and activities. Requests for accommodations by persons with disabilities may be made by contacting the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities at 517-884-RCPD or on the web at rcpd.msu.edu. Once your eligibility for an accommodation has been determined, you  will be issued a verified individual services accommodation (“VISA”) form. Please present this  form to me at the start of the term and/or two weeks prior to the accommodation date (test,          project, etc). Requests received after this date will be honored whenever possible

Course Schedule:

Week 1 (7/5) – The Anthropocene

-    Roy Scranton – Learning to Die in the Anthropocene chapter 1 Week 2 (7/11) – Class/Nature/Slow Violence

-    Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - The Communist Manifesto (selections)

-     Matthew T. Huber – Ecological Politicsfor the Working Class

-    Rob Nixon – Introduction to Slow Violence (selections)

Week 3 (7/18) – Denial as Repression, Denial as Oppression, and Capitalist Realism

-    Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism (Chapter 1)

-     Tad DeLay – “Denial Futures” from Salvage

-    Film Viewing: Children of Men (2006) dir. Alfonso Cuaron Week 4 (7/25)- Energy Culture/Fossil Capital

-    Imre Szeman and Jeff Diamanti – “Nine Principles for a Critical Theory of Energy”

-    Andre Gorz – “The Social Ideology of the Motor Car”

Midterm due Sunday 7/31 by 11:59

Week 5 (8/1) – Eco-Apartheid/Environmental Racism/Shock Therapy

-    Andreas Malm – White Skin, Black Fuel (selections)

-    Naomi Klein – The Shock Doctrine (selections) Week 6 (8/8) – Degrowth/Direct Action

-    Kate Soper – Post Growth Living (selections)

-    Andreas Malm – How to Blow up a Pipeline (selections)