Studies in Literary Theory & Criticism (481-0-20)
Topic
Technologies of the Self
Instructors
James Joseph Hodge
847 4915675
University Hall Room 408
Meeting Info
University Library 3622: Thurs 2:00PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
The History of Media Technologies and English
This seminar examines the late twentieth- and twenty-first century emergence and saturation of contemporary culture by personalized electronic and computational technologies, primarily in the Anglophone West. The increasing cultural prominence of portable devices such as the Sony Walkman and the newly domestic character of "personal" computing -- from the Apple Macintosh to laptops to smartphones and networked applications -- through Michel Foucault's late career idea of "techniques of the self." For Foucault, such practices "permit individuals to effect by their own means, or with the help of others, a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality." While Foucault had a much longer historical perspective in mind, we will consider the novel prominence of technologies of the self and selfhood within the context of neoliberalism where the task of entrepreneurial self-management comes to define the ideology of personhood. Central to our inquiry, then, will be not only the literal technologies of the historical present but also the ways in which media technologies as well as aesthetics newly conjugate subject and environment in terms of a felt pressure to manage that relation. Notions of ambience and the ambient will be central to our investigations as well as the role of technological aesthetics in providing not only beauty or entertainment but rather moment-to-moment tactics of mood management. Topics may include ambient music, ASMR, self-care, and habit. Aesthetic texts may include works by Brian Eno, Tan Lin, Claudia Rankine, and Tsai Ming-Ling. Scholarly texts may include work by Nikolas Rose, Ian Hacking, Alan Liu, John Cheney-Lippold, Lauren Berlant, Paul Preciado, Hannah Zeavin, Scott Richmond, Paul Roquet, Melissa Gregg, Mack Hagood, and others. Students will also be required to attend the symposium on Lauren Berlant to be held in late October.
Class Materials (Required)
Required Print Texts:
Lauren Berlant, On the Inconvenience of Other People
Heike Geissler, Seasonal Associate
Tan Lin, Insomnia and the Aunt
Claudia Rankine, Don't Let Me Be Lonely
Course Reader