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| Semester | fall semester 2019 |
| Course frequency | Irregular |
| Lecturers | Peter Robert Burleigh (p.burleigh@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | In 1961, Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation" appeared as a ground breaking response to rational, structuralist readings of cultural artefacts and practices, moreover as a way to read beyond representation. The main drive of the essay is a historical overview that calls for a different form of reading allowing culture to speak, to enact, to be itself. Sontag's manifesto to revise critique can now be localised at the cusp of a particular turn away from the independence of the artefact towards complex, multiple even intersectional readings of context, producer, recipient and object or practice itself. In many ways, Sontag sets the scene for the performativity of critique. Thus, her essay serves as the point of departure and organizing principle for the consideration of ways to approach culture in general, artefacts and behaviours in particular. The course will follow Sontag's behest to think, read, critique differently by considering a number of thinkers that follow in her footsteps and will address a wide range of cultural products from visual to new media, from objects to architecture. Finally, we will point towards a post-human, anthropocenic, new wave of identity politics. |
| Learning objectives | Students will learn the context of «new criticism» and follow this path from the 1960s to the present. There will be background and detailed analysis of ways to read culture, so that students can transfer such reading to their own practices. Students will be oriented towards new modes of critique that bring the future into the now. |
| Bibliography | Foucault, Michel: Preface to The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses): An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books 1971. Sontag, Susan: Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1961. Steyerl, Hito: "In Defense of the Poor Image" e-flux.com. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/ in-defense-of-the-poor-image/ (Accessed 11 February, 2016). |
| Admission requirements | None |
| Course application | Please register by e-mail to alex.van-lierde@unibas.ch by 6.9.2019. At the same time please enroll via MOnA. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|
No dates available. Please contact the lecturer.
| Modules |
Modul: Introduction to Academic Communication in English (Bachelor's degree subject: English) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | as often as necessary |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Englische Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft |