Topics in Literary Theory (493-0-20)
Topic
Media Times
Instructors
Domietta Torlasco
847/491-8269
1860 S. Campus Drive, Crowe Hall #2-131
Meeting Info
Kresge Centennial Hall 3-410: Tues 3:00PM - 5:50PM
Overview of class
Time, World, Power: this course explores how audiovisual technologies have contributed to ordering the world by ordering time. First, we will consider the role that cinema has played in reshaping the very idea of time in accord with the demands of capitalism, industrialization, and colonial rule (think, for instance, of temporal calculation and synchronization) and in turning the dictum "time is money" into a maxim of subject formation at the very level of the sensorium. Second, we will consider how this logic of temporal control over labor and life has mutated with the diffusion of digital technologies and under the pressure of finance capitalism. Third, we will attend to the ways specific cinematic practices have resisted or subverted this logic and pointed in the direction of non-hierarchical forms of differentiation. Texts from film and media theory, feminist/queer theory, critical race theory, post-autonomist Marxism. Films/installations by John Akomfrah, Charlie Chaplin, Maya Deren, Harun Farocki, William Kentridge, Jean-Luc Godard, Ousmane Sembène, Hito Steyerl.
Class Materials (Required)
On Canvas.