Theories of Visual Culture

(Spring 2006, R 6-8.30)

Film is more than the 20th century art. It’s another part of the 20th century mind. It’s the world seen from inside. We’ve come to a certain point in the history of film. If a thing can be filmed, film is implied in the thing itself. This is where we are. The 20th century is on film. It’s the filmed century. You have to ask yourself if there’s anything more important than the fact that we’re constantly on film, constantly watching ourselves. The whole world is on film, all the time. Spy satellites, microscopic scanners, pictures of the uterus, embryos, sex, war, assassinations, everything. (Don DeLillo, The Names 200)

The visible is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to betray its object. (Fredric Jameson, Signatures of the Visible 1)

Pas une image juste, juste une image. (Jean-Luc Godard, Vent d'Est)

Course Description

Vision has a longstanding central place in western thought and is written into both our most basic philosophical concepts—speculation (from the Latin specere, to look at), theory (from the Greek theorein, to observe), Enlightenment, clarity, perspective, insight, etc.—and everyday ideology—think of the oft-repeated adage that “I believe it when I see it,” for instance. But in the last few decades in the US, vision’s place in everyday life has, if anything, intensified: from the womb (ultrasound) to the tomb (the availability of drive-thru, closed-circuit viewing at many funeral homes), our lives are super-saturated with images. Given the intensive smearing of vision across the new media, video, the Internet, “postmodern” arts, the ubiquity of advertising, satellite television, and the globalized hegemony of the Hollywood film industry, this course will work through theoretical discourses that try to map, diagnose, anticipate, and react to these new, “aesthetic” forms of visual power.

The texts I have chosen for this course—which, in one way, could also be thought of as an introduction to visual culture studies, a rising sub-discipline in the Humanities—are highly theoretical in nature. You cannot read very far in visual culture studies without running into, for example, Heidegger, various thinkers from and influenced by the so-called Frankfurt School, Lacanian psychoanalysis, or post-structuralist philosophers such as Foucault and Deleuze. So, I think it’s imperative that anyone interested in visuality become familiar with how some of the major thinkers of the 20th century have conceptualized vision and what the (differing) stakes of such theories of vision are. To this end, our course-trajectory traces a lineage from an analog mode of visual power epitomized by mechanical reproduction to a new mode of visual power characterized by digital production. Consequently, one of the key questions we should keep in mind while reading these texts is in how far theories of vision that antecede the emergence of digital technologies continue to be useful for building a productive conceptual framework for our encounters with visual power today.

Note: This is not a "film class," despite the generic course title "Studies in Film." That is, I do not assume any knowledge about film, film history, film theory, etc., nor do I expect you to write on film. We won't deal with specific films (in fact, you don't have to see any for this course), though I may occasionally screen a clip, if I think it might illustrate a specific point in a helpful way.

Requirements

Just in case: I fully expect that you attend all class periods and are on time. You cannot miss more than 1 class period before you run the risk of failing this course.

In addition to simply trying to get our heads around the conceptual matrix of our class’s texts, I envision this course to do specific work for you. For one, becoming more familiar with the theorists we cover is bound to help you in future job interviews. Not only will you have something to say about these thinkers when any of their names are being mentioned, but I hope you will also be able to mobilize theory as a tool to engage whatever questions are being thrown at you. That is, I want us to focus on what theory can do, more so than debating what it “means.” One of the things it can do, based on my experience, is provide helpful tools for breaking down, framing, and articulating in a concise manner some of the basic moves of any argument—a skill that comes in very handy not only in interview situations but also when writing your job letter, teaching, or writing your own research essays.

In order to get job interviews, however, it can’t hurt to have a good c.v. (to say the least). To this end, I envisage the conference paper and the longer research paper as a double-whammy display of academic prowess: my hope is that you will write a shorter paper (8-10 pages, or 2,500-3,000 words) that you will indeed submit to a conference, and that you will use the research paper (20-30 pages, or 6,000-9,000 words) as an opportunity to craft a scholarly/theoretical essay consciously geared toward publication with a good peer-reviewed academic journal in a field relevant to your larger area of interest. To facilitate this outcome, we will spend some time talking about how to make theoretical arguments by attending to how the texts we read are constructed.

Beyond this in-class activity, however, I also propose that we schedule 2 conference-presentation sessions, to be held after Spring break, outside of class, in the early evening, at my home (I’ll supply some drinks and food). We would arrange “panels” for each day, with a maximum of 3 participants per panel and no more than 2 per extra session. You won't have to come on the day you are not scheduled to present, though you may certainly choose to do so. For both days, I’m thinking along the following lines: begin with 1st panel of non more than 3 presenters, including Q&A; then a pizza and beer/wine/or-whatever-beverage-you-fancy break; then 2nd panel of no more than 3 presenters, including Q&A. The goal of doing this is to provide you with some extra practice presenting a paper and negotiating a subsequent Q&A session. Further, the potential feedback you receive from your peers (in addition to the written feedback you get from me on your presentation paper) might help you develop your argument for your final research paper. While I know that I cannot force you to agree to these extra sessions, I hope that you see the potential benefit this may have for you and thus agree to do this (I don’t want to take up classroom time for this).

I envision (pun intended) the final research paper as an expanded version of your presentation paper. As for the subject matter of your paper, you are free to choose whatever you want to—as long as you produce an essay that is well researched, informed by/engaged in a conversation with our course focus, intelligently argued, appropriately documented, and conceived with an eye on future publication. Your paper may put into practice what you have learned about visual culture theory. For instance, you could engage poetry, fiction, drama, creative non-fiction, television, sports, film, music, architecture, the Internet, visual art, as well as social/aesthetic formations (women’s health and visual technologies; race and genetics; the new economy; etc.). You may also choose to write a straight-up theory paper, engaging a specific theorist of the visual on his or her own terms, or working through a specific theoretical question related to the visual by putting two or more theorists of the visual in conversation with each other.

Your choice of theorist(s) is not limited to the ones we cover in class. If you happen to be immersed in, say Henri Lefebvre or Judith Butler, I don’t see a reason why you shouldn’t be able to take this course as an opportunity to keep working on and/or with them. In fact, my general advice is: whatever you do, make this paper work for you. Obviously, you can use this course simply as an excursion into foreign territory and experiment with something to which you may or may not ever return. However, I think it is advisable that you think about how the work you do for this class fits into your general research program, no matter at what stage you currently are in your graduate studies career. When I was a graduate student (even as a Master’s student), I found it very productive to approach all seminar papers with the demand that they move me along towards my larger goal: finishing my dissertation and getting a Research-1 jobb. To this end, I either wrote seminar papers as potential blueprints for chapters, or, if the subject matter was too far afield (i.e., Shakespeare had nothing to do with my research on violence in post WWII American fiction and film), I engaged the subject matter in such a way that I still allowed myself to work through conceptual issues that were pertinent to my larger project (i.e., I wrote a paper on one (!) printed “etc.” in the stage directions of Henry VIII, working myself through Derrida and Deleuze’s theories of language).

In general, I welcome and indeed encourage you to talk to me about your project ideas--the earlier the better. While I can’t write these papers for you, I think I may be able to guide you in the process of researching, thinking through, framing, and revising your argument.

The only project ideas I will not accept are straight-up "creative" projects (i.e., a set of poems, a short story, or a chapter of a novel; creative non-fiction is also something that by and large is inappropriate for this course). I am simply not qualified to evaluate such writing. In any case, non-scholarly writing is not appropriate for a class that emphasizes scholarly research and critical theory, just as writing a theory paper on Derrida would not be appropriate for a creative writing course focusing on the art of short story writing).

Course Texts to Buy

Note: These texts will be ordered through the University bookstore, but you may be able to find cheaper used copies of these texts through websites such as Half.com or Amazon.com. And in case you have not used Internet book-price comparison search engines, Google “books” and “price compare” to find a number of helpful search engines that allow you to locate the cheapest copies available on the net.

Additional Course Texts, made available electronically (blackboard, electronic course reserve, web)

Course Schedule

Note: For research purposes, I have to attend the Berlin film festival in February. Consequently, I cannot meet for class on February 9 and 16. We need to re-schedule those sessions. Depending on the days all of us can agree on, the schedule will have to be adjusted accordingly. The order in which we discuss these texts, however, will remain the same.

1/12 Class introduction. Heidegger, “The Age of World Picture” (meaning: you have to read this essay for this introductory meeting)
1/19 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”
1/26 Horkheimer and Adorno, “Concept of Enlightenment,” "Excursus #1: Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment," and “Culture Industry”
2/2 Benjamin, “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”; “Unpacking my Library”; and “The Task of the Translator”
2/23 Foucault, Archeology of Knowledge, “Introduction”; Discipline and Punish, “The Body of the Condemned” and "Docile Bodies”
2/28 Foucault, “Panopticism” from Discipline and Punish; from History of Sexuality 81-102; and Deleuze, “Desire and Pleasure” (Meeting starts @ 6.15pm)
3/2 Jameson, “Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”
3/9 Silverman, World Spectators
3/16 Spring break
3/23 Deleuze, Francis Bacon; a Francis Bacon image website; and a scathing critique of Deleuze's encounter with Bacon
3/30 Deleuze, Cinema 2; week for out-of-class conference presentations
4/6 Deleuze, Cinema 2
4/11 Shaviro, “Film Theory and Visual Fascination” (Meeting starts @ 6.15pm)
4/13 Manovich, Language of New Media
4/20 Hansen, New Philosophy for New Media
4/27 Deleuze, “Postscript on Societies of Control” and “Control and Becoming”

Note: It will be impossible to cover each text in its entirety. While my hope and expectation is that you will read all books from first to last page, I ask you to do your best to read as much as you can. I will also point you in advance to specific passages that I consider more crucial than others. However, unlike in an undergraduate course where it is often necessary to take students by the hand and work them through a text page by page, I believe a graduate level course should expect participants to operate on a relatively independent level. Thus, I am not worried about not being able to cover more than 2 or 3 chapters of, say, Hansen’s book, as I have faith that you are cable of dealing with it above and beyond what we’ll cover in class.

Additional Readings:

Here’s a quickie list of go-to books for individual authors or topics. While it is inevitably evaluative (i.e., I think these are among the best books on visual culture and/or a particular figure), this list is hardly meant to be exhaustive. Each of these books will point you in myriad other directions.

Heidegger and Visual Culture
Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought
Philip Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art, Politics
John Sallis, Shades—Of Painting at the Limit
Wilhelm Wurzer, Filming and Judgment: Between Heidegger and Adorno

Adorno
Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory
J. M. Bernstein, The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno
Lambert Zuidervaart, Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory

Benjamin
Walter Benjamin, The Arcade Project (Benjamin’s mammoth unfinished work on everyday life in the 19th century, left with Georges Bataille, who hid it in the national library as the Nazis came into Paris, months before Benjamin’s suicide)
Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcade Project
Eduardo Cadava, Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History

Foucault
Michel Foucault, This is not a Pipe
Gilles Deleuze, Foucault
Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom

Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image
Gregory Flaxman, ed., The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema
D.N. Rodowick, Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine
Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body

Jameson
Fredric Jameson, Signatures of the Visible and Geopolitical Aesthetic
Clint Burnham, The Jamesonian Unconscious: The Aesthetics of Marxist Theory
Richard Dienst, Still Life in Real Time: Theory after Television

Other books of importance, in various fields

From the Legal Department:

The university’s policy on academic honesty is stated in the “Student Code of Conduct.” The policy prohibits plagiarism, cheating on examinations, unauthorized collaboration, falsification, and multiple submissions. Violation of the policy will result in failing the class, in addition to disciplinary sanctions.