Arjun Dhanjal

Through this course, we will interrogate some of the foundational theoretical work in communication and cultural studies and develop a critical relationship to three main ‘streams’ in the study and production of communication and/or culture: media cultures, media industries, and media technologies.

We will examine some different ways we have faced problems of being, belief, and oppression in the face of what Félix Guattari would call the technosphere. Being human is, according to our Enlightenment heritage, inextricably bound up in rationality and rationalism, separation of the mind and body, and understandings of belief.

If analog technologies challenged early modern theorists anxious about the definition of ‘human’ to delimit what was and was not identifiable sapient behaviour, then digital technologies have most definitely blurred such boundaries beyond recognition.

We will address the West’s Enlightenment inheritance by subjecting it to a diverse range of theoretical positions that analyze, criticize, and often dispose of that epistemology entirely. We will walk the phenomenological circle, tracing the outlines of beliefs as they were and continue to be reshaped by humans interacting with digital technologies. The course ultimately cross-examines some of the ways in which identity, fractured and tentatively reformed in terms of race, gender, and class, is mediated by technology.

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MASS FRACTURE READING AND RE-READING THE TECHNOSPHERE

MS 9601

Sanders, Rupert. Ghost in the Shell. 2017.

MS 9601

ASSIGNMENTS AND EVALUATION

All students will, by default, follow Evaluative Model A. Should you be interested in subscribing to Evaluative Model B, you need to inform me of this choice in writing no later than [INSERT DATE HERE]. Once you switch evaluative models, you may not revert your decision.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

In this course, students will: 1. develop a critical, graduate-level understanding of a breadth of theoretical and

philosophical approaches that comprise the various fields that inform media studies; 2. engage critically with various media texts as applicative modes for understanding these

theories and philosophies (including film, television, and graphic novels); and 3. build the skills that they will need when pursuing careers, both academic and professional.

LOGS (10% or 15%)

Logs are all about relaxation and thought. Let your writing go for about 500 words. Your direction is fine—log thoughts aren’t to be answered or ‘proven’. A log is not an essay. No formal structure is needed. The whole thing about logs is not to conserve time or engage in word or sound bites, but to let time out, let the clock wind down, let the language and thoughts flow—let the connections make connections. People are often concerned about going on tangents, but as far as I’m concerned, in logs, there are no tangents. Follow the tangents, and then the tangents that spring from them.

MODERATIONS (15% or 25%)

Each member of the class will be responsible for conducting a moderation for at least one class reading (two, if you have chosen evaluative model B). The moderation should unpack the reading, while engaging with its cultural contexts and the other texts we have discussed in the course. Moderations should last for approximately one hour, and should incorporate an element of class discussion. One of your logs should reflect on a moderation you’ve facilitated.

FINAL ASSIGNMENT (45% or 50%)

The figuration of the final assignment is dependent on the evaluative model you have chosen. Both assignments have been designed to give you immense flexibility. For both the final paper and the syllabus creation, you may choose any topic(s) about which to teach or write—just run it by me first, okay?

EVALUATIVE MODEL A: EVALUATIVE MODEL B:

• Participation (20%) • 5x logs (see below) (15%) • 1x moderation of class discussions (15%) • Final paper (50%)

• Participation (20%) • 3x logs (see below) (10%) • 2x moderations of class discussions (25%) • Syllabus creation (45%)

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SCHEDULE MS 9601THE END

In this introductory meeting, we will refresh our understandings of Enlightenment-era philosophy, as well as early modern notions of what it means to be. We will develop a rough understanding of the postmodern, and use this understanding not just to inform the theories and philosophies we will encounter in this course, but also to interrogate earlier understandings of meaning and being, epistemology and ontology.

We will also assign the first round of reading moderations, and outline the guidelines of engagement within the class. You will learn a bit about me and my expectations of you, and I will learn about you and your expectations of me and of this class.

MEDIA CULTURES • Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass

Deception.” In Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, edited by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner, Rev. ed., 41–72. Keyworks in Cultural Studies 2. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

• Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed.” Poetics 12, no. 4–5 (November 1983): 311–56.

• Debord, Guy. “The Commodity as Spectacle.” In Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, edited by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner, Rev. ed., 117–121. Keyworks in Cultural Studies 2. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

CULTURAL (IM)MATERIALISM: SEMIOTICS AND THE SEMIOLOGICAL IMAGE • Baudrillard, Jean. “The Precession of Simulacra.” In Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks,

edited by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner, Rev. ed., 453–481. Keyworks in Cultural Studies 2. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

• de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Roy Harris. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

• Barthes, Roland. “Myth Today.” In Mythologies, translated by Annette Lavers, 109–164. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2006.

Recommended media screening: Villeneuve, Denis. Blade Runner 2049. Sci-Fi, Thriller, 2017.

(DE/ANTI)LINEARITY • Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. “The Desiring-Machines.” In Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and

Schizophrenia, 1–42. Penguin Classics. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2009. • Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. “Introduction: Rhizome.” In A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism

and Schizophrenia, 3–25. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. • Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. “Year Zero: Faciality.” In A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism

and Schizophrenia, 167–191. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. • “Assemblage”, “Becoming”, “Body”, “Body without Organs”, “Deterritorialisation/

Reterritorialisation”, “Exteriority/Interiority”, “Faciality”, “Identity”, “Molecular”, “Multiplicity”, “Ontology”, “Phenomenology”, “Plateau”, “Power”, “Rhizome”, and “Virtual/Virtuality.” In The Deleuze Dictionary, edited by Adrian Parr, Revised edition. Edinburgh University Press, 2010.

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SCHEDULE MS 9601MARXIST APPROACHES TO POWER AND POLITICS • Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an

Investigation).” In Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, edited by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner, Rev. ed., 79–88. Keyworks in Cultural Studies 2. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

• Gramsci, Antonio. “(i) History of the Subaltern Classes; (ii) The Concept of ‘Ideology’; (iii) Cultural Themes: Ideological Material.” In Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, edited by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner, Rev. ed., 13–17. Keyworks in Cultural Studies 2. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

• Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. “A Propaganda Model.” In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, 1–36. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002.

• Williams, Raymond. “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory.” In Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, edited by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner, Rev. ed., 130–143. Keyworks in Cultural Studies 2. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

QUEER APPROACHES TO POWER AND POLITICS • Foucault, Michel. “Part Two: The Repressive Hypothesis.” In The History of Sexuality: An

Introduction, 15–50. New York: Vintage, 1990. • Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” In Foucault in an Age of Terror, edited by Stephen Morton

and Stephen Bygrave, 152–182. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2008. • Muñoz, José Esteban. “Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay

Pragmatism.” In Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, 19–32. New York: New York University Press, 2009.

IMMATERIAL LABOUR AND THE DIGITAL IMPERIALIST PROJECT • Dyer-Witheford, Nick, and Greig S. De Peuter. “‘EA Spouse’ and the Crisis of Video Game

Labour: Enjoyment, Exclusion, Exploitation, and Exodus.” Canadian Journal of Communication 31, no. 3 (October 23, 2006): 599–617.

• Rossiter, Ned. “FCJ-220 Imperial Infrastructures and Asia beyond Asia: Data Centres, State Formation and the Territoriality of Logistical Media.” The Fibreculture Journal, no. 29 (July 31, 2017).

Recommended media screening: Euros, Lyn. “Fifteen Million Merits.” Black Mirror. 2011.

CRITICAL RACE INTERVENTIONS • Eid, Mahmoud. “Perceptions about Muslims in Western Societies.” In Re-Imagining the Other:

Culture, Media, and Western-Muslim Intersections, edited by Karim H. Karim and Mahmoud Eid, 99–120. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

• hooks, bell. “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance.” In Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, edited by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner, Rev. ed., 366–380. Keyworks in Cultural Studies 2. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

• Rubenstein, Richard. “Religious Conflict, Empire-Building, and the Imagined Other.” In Re-Imagining the Other: Culture, Media, and Western-Muslim Intersections, edited by Karim H. Karim and Mahmoud Eid, 175–194. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

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SCHEDULE MS 9601RACIALIZING ONLINE • Nakamura, Lisa. Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet. Electronic Mediations 23.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Recommended media screening: Wachowski, Lana, and Lilly Wachowski. The Matrix. Action, Sci-Fi, 1999.

POSTHUMAN (DIS)EMBODIMENT AND FEMINIST THEORY • Hallenbeck, Sarah. “Toward a Posthuman Perspective: Feminist Rhetorical Methodologies and

Everyday Practices.” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 15, no. 1 (January 2012): 9–27. • Haraway, Donna J. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the

Late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, 149–182. London: Free Association Books, 1998.

• Puar, Jasbir K. “‘I Would Rather Be a Cyborg than a Goddess’: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory.” philoSOPHIA 2, no. 1 (October 2, 2012): 49–66.

LOOKING, SEEING, READING FILM: THE POSTHUMAN IN POPULAR CULTURE • Film screening: Oshii, Mamoru. Ghost in the Shell. Animation, Action, Crime, 1995. • Silvio, Carl. “Refiguring the Radical Cyborg in Mamoru Oshii’s ‘Ghost in the Shell.’” Science

Fiction Studies 26, no. 1 (1999): 54–72. • Film screening: Scott, Ridley. Blade Runner. Director’s Cut. Sci-Fi, Thriller, 1982. • Yuen, Wong Kin. “On the Edge of Spaces: ‘Blade Runner’, ‘Ghost in the Shell’, and Hong Kong’s

Cityscape.” Science Fiction Studies 27, no. 1 (2000): 1–21. • TV screening: Welsh, Brian. “The Entire History of You.” Black Mirror. 2011.

CATALYZING CHANGE: SOCIAL MEDIA AS RESISTANCE • Stewart, Bonnie. “Twitter as Method: Using Twitter as a Tool to Conduct Research.” In The Sage

Handbook of Social Media Research Methods, edited by Luke Sloan and Anabel Quan-Haase, 1st edition., 251–265. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Inc, 2016.

• Tawil-Souri, Helga. “It’s Still About the Power of Place.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 5, no. 1 (January 1, 2012): 86–95.

• Papacharissi, Zizi. “Affective Publics and Structures of Storytelling: Sentiment, Events and Mediality.” Information, Communication & Society 19, no. 3 (March 3, 2016): 307–24.

• Amir and Khalil. Zahra’s Paradise. 1st ed. New York: First Second, 2011.

NEW BEGINNINGS Come ready to candidly discuss your thoughts on the course as you experienced it. We will talk about our respective journeys through understanding these media theories and how our ways of seeing, understanding, and refiguring the world(s) around us have changed—and how, in some ways, they remain the same. We will complete our walk around the phenomenological circle and come to understand that we are not indeed at the end, but instead, only just beginning.

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