Paper 1
Paper 1
Interpretation and Analysis
Due Thursday March 9
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Assignment: Please respond to one of the following prompts in a 2-page, double spaced paper. The interpretative paper asks that you develop a close reading of one text we have studied, focusing on the details of the author's argument. Provide at least one quotation as evidence to support your interpretation. (25 points).
(1) Karl Marx develops alienation as the key social process in capitalist modernity. What does he mean when he says that we are alienated from our "species-being"? How does the idea of an alienated "species-being" explain, or grasp, the structure of capitalist institutions (for example labor, the commodity, private property)?
(2) In his essay "Society," Adorno argues that society is "essentially process"? What is the structure of this process? What are the fundamental connections that mediate the relations between individuals in society?
(3) In Civilization and its Discontents Sigmund Freud claims that civilization is the product of the renunciation of the instincts. What does he mean? What is the connection between the psychological and mental dynamics he theorizes with the structure of civilization?