Strategies of ThoughtThis short series of lectures provide a focus on a range of theorists/writers in relation to specific themes. Rather than trying to map out the complex history of theoretical ideas, it is designed so that each week the focus is on one theme or idea seen through the work of a number of different theorists/writers. To help give focus to the subject there will be a main text each week that will give a foundation to some of the core ideas. The aim is to look at ways in which theories and ideas might be applied to a wide variety of things.

The essential aim is to explore the possibilities around different strategies of thought, ones that might be crucial in illuminating / analysing / deconstructing the visual and experiential aspects of the things that surround us. The lectures are not designed to be 'closed' responses to their theme, the intention is purely to open up ideas for further thought and more specifically the possibilities of how some things might be applied to the production of work.

Autumn 2015

Dr Steven Gartside

Strategies of ThoughtTime: 4.30 – 5.30pm

Contact: Steven Gartside (s.gartside@mmu.ac.uk) Room 109 Righton Building

The Strategies of Thought course is part of the Open Source series of postgraduate lectures which run through the Autumn and Spring term.

Location: The course is somewhat nomadic; as thought itself tends to wander and drift around and through topics over time, this particular course also does something similar, but with rooms. Please check below for the right room for each week.

Reading: To get the most out of the course it is recommended that the 'main reading' is read before the lecture (you may prefer to look at it afterwards, you may wish to do both). A copy of the reading will be distributed the week before.

Thursday 8th October Room LT6 Manton (Dis)connections: reading/thinking/doing

The opening session is designed to be more wide-ranging in scope. The idea is to explore the connections and disconnections between reading, thinking and different forms of doing. It will touch upon work by Borges, Calvino, Eco, Nabokov, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer amongst others. (There is no main reading for this first session)

Thursday 15th October Room BZ 303Boredom…Waiting and Creativity

Main Reading: Martin Heidegger, ‘The First Form of Boredom: Becoming Bored by Something’, from The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995, pp.78 - 88Other Reading:Siegfried Kracauer, 'Boredom' from The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995, pp.331 - 334Peter Osborne, ‘The dreambird of experience: Utopia, possibility, boredom,’ Radical Philosophy, 137, May/June 2006Thomas Pynchon, 'The Deadly Sins/Sloth; Nearer my Couch to Thee', New York Times, June 6, 1993Bertrand Russell, 'In Praise of Idleness' from In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1935, pp.9 - 29Georges Teyssot, ‘Boredom and Bedroom: The Suppression of the Habitual’, Assemblage, no. 30, 1996, pp.44 - 61

Thursday 22nd October Room BZ 308Lists, Order and Classification

Main Reading: Georges Perec, ‘Think/Classify’ from Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997 (orig. 1974), pp.188 - 211Other Reading: Jean Baudrillard, 'A Marginal System: Collecting', from The System of Objects, London: Verso, 1996, pp.85 - 106 Walter Benjamin, 'The Collector' from The Arcades Project, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999, pp.206 - 211Jorge Luis Borges, 'The Analytical Language of John Wilkins' from The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922 - 1986, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999, pp.229 - 232Umberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists, London: MacLehose Press, 2009Michel Foucault, 'Preface' from The Order of Things, London, Tavistock, 1970, pp.xv -xxiv

Thursday 29th October Room BZ 303The Everyday

Main Reading:Henri Lefebvre, 'Work and Leisure in Everyday Life', from Critique of Everyday Life, volume 1, London: Verso 2008, pp. 29 - 42Other Reading:Maurice Blanchot, ‘Everyday Speech’ from The Infinite Conversation,

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, pp. 238 - 245Ben Highmore, ‘Henri Lefebvre’s Dialectics of Everyday Life’ from Everyday

Life and Cultural Theory: an introduction, London: Routledge, 2002Henri Lefebvre, ‘The Everyday and Everydayness’ from Harris & Burke (eds.) Architecture of the Everyday, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997,

pp. 32 – 37

Thursday 5th November Room BZ 403Seduction (of objects and things)

Main Reading: Jean Baudrillard, ‘Seduction, or, The Superficial Depths’, from The Ecstasy of Communication, New York: Semiotext(e), 1988, pp. 57 - 75Other Reading:Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art: manifestos, interviews, essays, Los Angeles:Semiotext(e), 2005Beatriz Colomina, Sexuality and Space, New York: Princeton Architectural

Press,1992Steven Connor, The Book of Skin, London: Reaktion, 2004Neil Leach, Camouflage, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006Michel Serres, the five senses, London: Continuum, 2008 (originally 1985)