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SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION SPECIAL TOPICS 488-4 The Body, Technology and Knowledge
Dr. Kirsten McAllister Spring 2005 Office: RCB 6147 HC Campus Room 1415, Mon. 3:30-7:20PM; Phone: 604-268-6917 Office Hours: Mon. 2:30-3:20PM or by appt. Email: [email protected] Phone during office hours 604-291-5181 Add Vivian Sobhcha Modernism/Modernity 4.3 (1997) 19-43
Access provided by Simon Fraser University
Dreams of Metallized Flesh: Futurism and the Masculine Body
Christine Poggi Constructing the Body Physiologic ENGC 639 - Interpretative Methods in Media Prof. Cornelius Borck Winter Term 2005 Thursdays 10:05 am-12:55 pm ARTS W-5
Contact Information Office hours: Thursdays 14:00 to 15:00, in room W-265. Telephone: 398-2893 / 398-4995. Email: [email protected]
Course Outline This course offers an intensive analysis of the cultural history of the scientific construction of the human body. Starting with LaMettrie’s machine theory and the so-called laboratory revolution in the life sciences, it will look at various sites participating at the production of the human body in modernity, up to recent discourses on cyborgs, cyberpsychology, and posthumanism. Along this trajectory, the seminar will investigate a variety of thematic topics as well as methodological issues, including spaces of 2 representation, instruments and mediating technologies, industrialization, Taylorism, prostheses, etc. Each session of the seminar will concentrate on a single topic, typically by combining some source materials with a major piece of scholarship and further literature.
On the Course This small seminar-style class will be conducted mainly in an interactive discussion format. Classes will be student-led, and it is crucial that students do the readings ahead of time and attend class regularly. Furthermore, students are encouraged to share their interests in relation to this seminar with the group and to suggest further material for the discussions. The readings listed in this syllabus are provisional in this respect; further readings may be added in agreement with the participants along the way. Part of the course grade, as detailed below, will depend upon regular class participation. The essential readings for this course will be put on reserve in the respective libraries on campus; some book chapters and most articles will be available in the form of a course pack that can be purchased at the McGill Bookstore.
Course Requirements Students will be required to write a term paper (of about 7000 words, total) on a topic related to the course. This paper will count for 50 per cent of the final grade. Students should identify their topic early in the course and discuss it with me. Class participation will count for another 50 per cent. Participation includes attendance, performance of assigned tasks, and contributions to discussions. One assignment will consist in an introduction (15 minutes) to one of the major readings of the session. McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (see http://www.mcgill.ca/integrity for more information).
Background Reading Mary Shelley: Frankenstein, or, the modern prometheus; edited by D.L. Macdonald, K.D. Scherf. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press 1994. (or any other edition)
Lois N. Magner: A history of the life sciences. 2nd Edition, New York: Marcel Dekker 1994. [Chapter 6: Physiology, pp. 225-259.]
Michel Feher (ed.): Fragments for a History of the Human Body, 3 vols. New York: Zone Books 1989.
Anson Rabinbach: The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press 1990.
Mark Seltzer: Bodies and machines. New York: Routledge 1992.
Jonathan Crary & Sanford Kwinter (eds.): Incorporations. New York: Zone Books 1992.
David Wills: Prosthesis. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995. The cyborg handbook, edited by Chris Hables Gray. London: Routledge 1995. N. Katherine Hayles: How we became posthuman : virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1999. Don Ihde: Bodies in Technology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2002.
Syllabus
6 January 2005 Starting by mixing past and present: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein vis-à-vis technologically assisted reproduction
Source Text: Mary Shelley: Frankenstein: complete, authoritative text with biographical, historical, and cultural contexts, critical history, and essays from contemporary critical perspectives; edited by Johanna M. Smith. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000.
Source Text: Janet Isaacs Ashford: Natural Love. In: Cyborg babies: from techno-sex to techno-tots (edited by Robbie Davis-Floyd & Joseph Dumit). London: Routledge 1998, pp. 90-102.
Further Reading: Marilyn Butler: Frankenstein and radical science. In: Making humans: complete texts with introduction, historical contexts, critical essays (edited by Judith Wilt). Boston: Houghton Mifflin 2003, pp. 307-319.
Further Reading: Bruno Latour: On the partial existence of existing and nonexisting objects. In: Biographies of Scientific Objects (edited by Lorraine Daston). Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2000, pp. 247-269. 13 January 2005
Cartesianism and the machine theory of the body
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Source text: Julien Offray de La Mettrie: Machine man. In: Machine man and other writings; translated and edited by Ann Thomson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, pp. 1-39.
Source text: Julien Offray de La Mettrie: L'homme machine. Leyde: De l'imp. d'E. Luzac, fils, 1748.
Book assignment: Kathleen Wellman: La Mettrie: medicine, philosophy, and enlightenment. Durham: Duke University Press 1992.
Required reading: Georges Canguilhem: From the social to the vital. In: The normal and the pathological; translated by Carolyn R. Fawcett in collaboration with Robert S. Cohen. New York: Zone Books 1991, pp. 237-256.
Required reading: Georges Canguilhem: Machine and organism. In: Incorporations (edited by Jonathan Crary & Sanford Kwinter). New York: Zone Books 1992, pp. 45-69.
Required reading: Georges Canguilhem: The role of epistemology in contemporary history of science. In: Ideology and rationality in the history of the life sciences; translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988, pp. 1-23.
Further reading: Sergio Moravia: From homme machine to homme sensible: changing eighteenth-century models of man’s image. Journal of the History of Ideas 39: 45-60, 1978.
20 January 2005 Experimental physiology and the laboratory revolution
Source text: Claude Bernard: An introduction to the study of experimental medicine; translated by Henry Copley Greene, with an introduction by Lawrence J. Henderson. New York: The Macmillan company 1927. [Part one, chapter I, pp. 5-26; part two, chapter 1, pp. 59-86]
Book assignment: Georges Canguilhem: The normal and the pathological. Translated by Carolyn R. Fawcett in collaboration with Robert S. Cohen. New York: Zone Books 1989.
Required reading: Timothy Lenoir: Laboratories, medicine and public life in Germany, 1830-1849: ideological roots of the institutional revolution. In: The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine (edited by Andrew Cunningham & Perry Williams). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992, pp. 14-71.
Required reading: Ian Hacking: The self-vindication of the laboratory sciences. In: Science as Culture and Practice (edited by Andrew Pickering). Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1992, pp. 29-64.
Required reading: Bruno Latour: Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world. In: Science observed: perspectives on the social study of science (edited by Karin D. Knorr-Cetina & Michael Mulkay). London: Sage 1983, pp. 141-170.
Further reading: Georges Canguilhem: Théorie et technique de l’expérimentation chez Claude Bernard. In: Études d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences. Paris: Librarie philosophique J. Vrin 1968, pp. 143-155.
27 January 2005 Spaces of time: the graphic method and chronophotography
Source text: Etienne-Jules Marey: La méthode graphique dans les sciences expérimentales et principalement en physiologie et en médecine. 2. Edition Paris: Masson 1885. [Preface]
Source text: Etienne-Jules Marey: Movement; translated from the French by Eric Pritchard. New York 1895. [Chapters VIII: Human movements: from the point of view of mechanics, and IX: Certain movements in man: from the point of view of dynamics, pp. 126- 168.]
Source text: Eadweard Muybridge: The human figure in motion. Introd. by Robert Taft. New York: Dover 1955.
Book assignment: Marta Braun: Picturing time: the work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904). Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1992.
Book assignment: François Dagognet: Etienne-Jules Marey: a passion for the trace; translated by Robert Galeta with Jeanine Herman. New York: Zone Books 1992.
Required reading: Soraya de Chadarevian: Graphical method and discipline: self-recording instruments in nineteenth-century physiology. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 24: 267-291, 1993. (available online)
Required reading: Hans-Jörg Rheinberger: Experimental systems, graphematic spaces. In: Inscribing Science : Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication (edited by Timothy Lenoir). Stanford: Stanford University Press 1998, pp. 285-303.
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Further reading: Mary Ann Doane: Temporality, storage, legibility: Freud, Mearey, and the cinema. In: Endless night: cinema and psychoanalysis, parallel histories (edited by Janet Bergstrom). Berkeley: University of California Press 1999, pp. 57-87.
Further reading: Tom Gunning: Never seen this picture before: Muybridge in multiplicity. In: Phillip Prodger: Time stands still: Muybridge and the instantaneous photography movement; with an essay by Tom Gunning. New York: Oxford University Press 2003, pp. 222-272.
3 February 2005 The human motor in cultures of precision
Source text: Wilbur Olin Atwater: Experiments on the metabolism of matter and energy in the human body. 1900-1902. Washington: Govt. print. off. 1903.
Source text: C. F. Langworthy & H.G. Barott: Energy expenditure in household tasks. American Journal of Physiology 52: 400-408, 1920.
Book assignment: Anson Rabinbach: The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press 1990.
Required reading: Anson Rabinbach: The laws of the human motor. In: The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press 1990, pp. 120-145.
Required reading: Robert G. Frank: The telltale heart: physiological instruments, graphic method, and clinical hopes 1854-1914. In: The Investigative enterprise: experimental physiology in nineteenth-century medicine (edited by William Coleman & Frederic L. Holmes). Berkeley: University of California Press 1988, pp. 211-290.
Required reading: Robert Brain & Norton Wise: Muscles and engines: Indicator diagrams and Helmholtz's graphical methods. In: Universalgenie Helmholtz: Rückblick nach 100 Jahren (edited by Lorenz Krüger). Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1994, pp. 124-145.
Required reading: Iwan Rhys Morus: The measure of man: technologizing the Victorian body. History of Science 37: 249-282, 1999.
Further reading: Frederic L. Holmes & Kathryn M. Olesko: The images of precision: Helmholtz and the graphical methods in physiology. In: The values of precision (edited by M. Norton Wise). Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994, pp. 198-221.
Further reading: Simon Shaffer: Accurate measurement is an English science. In: The values of precision (edited by M. Norton Wise). Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994, pp. 135-172.
10 February 2005 Adapting human beings to machines
Source text: Marvin Everett Mundel: Systematic motion and time study. New York: Prentice-Hall 1947.
Source text: Frederick Winslow Taylor: A piece rate system. In: Scientific management; a collection of the more significant articles describing the Taylor system of management (edited by Clarence Bertrand Thompson). Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1914, pp. 636-683.
Source text: Frank B. Gilbreth & Lillian M. Gilbreth: Fatigue study: the elimination of humanity's greatest unnecessary waste, a first step in motion study. London: Routledge 1916. [Chapters VI, The fatigue museum: an object lesson, and VII, The Fatigue measurement and fatigue elimination: how to attach the problem scientifically, pp. 99-131.]
Book assignment: Mark Seltzer: Bodies and machines. New York: Routledge 1992.
Required reading: Mark Seltzer: The love-master. In: Bodies and machines. New York: Routledge 1992, pp. 147-172.
Required reading: Stanley Joel Reiser: The translation of physiological actions into the language of machines. In: Medicine and the reign of technology. New York: Cambridge University Press 1978, pp. 91-121.
Required reading: Lisa Herschbach: Prosthetic reconstructions: making the industry, re-making the body, modelling the nation. History Workshop Journal 44: 23-57, 1997. Further reading: Katherine Ott: The prosthetics of management: motion study, photography, and the industrialized body in World War I America. In: Artificial parts, practical lives: modern histories of prosthetics (edited by Katherine Ott, David Serlin & Stephen Mihm). New York: New York University Press 2002, pp. 249-281.
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17 February 2005 Streamlining the maimed: Prosthesis
Source text: Sigmund Freud: Civilization and its discontents, chapters I-III. In: Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud; translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey, vol. XXI, London: Hogarth Press 1955, pp. 64-98.
Source text: Marshall McLuhan: Understanding media; the extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill 1964. [Part I, Chapters 4-7, pp. 41-73]
Book assignment: David Wills: Prosthesis. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995.
Book assignment: Matthew Price: Bodies and souls: the rehabilitation of maimed soldiers in France and Germany during the First World War. Thesis (Ph. D.), Stanford University 1998.
Required reading: Tim Armstrong: Prosthetic modernism. In: Modernism, technology, and the body: a cultural study. New York: Cambridge University Press 1998, pp. 77-105.
Required reading: Joanna Zylinska: ’The future … is monstrous’: prosthesis as ethics. In: The cyborg experiments: the extensions of the body in the media age (Joanna Zylinska, ed.). New York: Continuum 2002, pp. 214-236.
Further reading: Sarah S. Jain: The prosthetic imagination: enabling and disabling the prosthesis trope. Science, Technology and Human Values 24: 31-54, 1999.
24 February 2005 No course. Study week.
3 March 2005 The psychic apparatus
Source text: Sigmund Freud: A note upon the mystic writing pad. In: Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud; translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey, vol. XIX, London: Hogarth Press 1955, pp. 227-232
Source text: Sigmund Freud: New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis, lecture 31: The dissection of the psychical apparatus. In: Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud; translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey, vol. XXII, London: Hogarth Press 1955, pp. 57-80.
Michel Foucault: Technologies of the Self: a seminar with Michel Foucault (edited by Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman & Patrick H. Hutton). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1988, pp. ###.
Book assignment: Kurt Danziger: Constructing the subject: historical origins of psychological research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990.
Book assignment: Friedrich Kittler: Discourse networks 1800/1900; translated by Michael Metteer, with Chris Cullens Stanford: Stanford University Press 1990.
Required reading: Jacques Derrida: Freud and the scene of writing. In: Writing and difference; translated, with an introd. and additional notes by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1978, pp. 196-231.
Required reading: Kenneth J. Gergen: The self: transfiguration by technology. In: Pathology and the postmodern: mental illness as discourse and experience (edited by Dwight Fee). London: Sage 2000, S. 100-115.
Required reading: Nikolas Rose: Assembling the modern self. In: Rewriting the self: histories from the Renaissance to the present (edited by Roy Porter). New York: Routledge 1997, pp. 224-248.
Required reading: Matthew Tomson: The psychological body. In: Medicine in the twentieth century (edited by Roger Cooter and John Pickstone). Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers 2000, pp. 291-306.
Further reading: Wilma Bucci: Freud’s abstract models of the psychical apparatus. In: Psychoanalysis and cognitive science: a multiple code theory, Psychoanalysis and cognitive science: a multiple code theory. New York: Guilford Press 1997, pp. 17-30.
Further reading: Sigmund Freud: The ego and the id. In: Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud; translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey, vol. XIX, London: Hogarth Press 1955, pp. 12-66. 10 March 2005 6
The physiology of large bodies: societies as scientifically forgeable objects
Source text: Walter B. Cannon: Epilogue: relations of biological and social homeostasis. In: The wisdom of the body; rev. and enl. edition. New York: W. W. Norton 1939, pp. 305-324.
Source text: Ivan P. Pavlov: The conditioned reflex. In: Lectures on conditioned reflexes, vol. 2: conditioned reflexes and psychiatry; translated and edited by W. Horsley Grantt. New York: International Publishers 1941, pp. 166-185.
Book assignment: Daniel P. Todes: Pavlov's physiology factory: experiment, interpretation, laboratory enterprise. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press 2002.
Book assignment: Elin L. Wolfe, A. Clifford Barger, Saul Benison: Walter B. Cannon, science and society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2000.
Required reading: Donald Fleming: Walter B. Cannon and Homeostasis. Social Research 51: 609-640, 1984.
Required reading: Steve Sturdy: The industrial body. In: Medicine in the twentieth century (edited by Roger Cooter and John Pickstone). Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers 2000, pp. 217-234.
Required reading: Matthew Biro: The new man as cyborg: figures of technology in Weimar visual culture. New German critique 62: 71-110, 1994.
Further reading: James Sey: The labouring body and the posthuman. In: Cyberpsychology (edited by Àngel J. Gordo-López & Ian Parker). London: MacMillan 1999, p.25-41.
Further reading: Slava Gerovitch: Love-Hate for Man-Machine Metaphors in Soviet Physiology: From Pavlov to 'Physiological Cybernetics.' Science in Context 15: 339-374, 2002.
Further reading: Thomas P. Hughes: Human-built world: how to think about technology and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2004. [Chapter 3, Technology as machine, pp. 45-75.]
17 March 2005 The nervous system, cybernetics, and the machine brain
Source text: Ralp W. Gerard: Digital notions in the central nervous system. In: Cybernetics: the Macy-Conferences 1946 – 1953 (edited by Claus Pias). Zurich: Diaphanes 2003, pp. 171-202.
Source text: W. Grey Walter: Intimations of personality. In: The living brain. New York: Norton 1953, pp. 197-232.
Book assignment: Joseph Dumit: Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity, Princeton / NJ: University Press 2003.
Book assignment: Laura Otis: Networking: Communicating With Bodies and Machines in the Nineteenth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2001.
Required reading: Laura Otis: The language of the nerves. In: Networking: Communicating With Bodies and Machines in the Nineteenth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2001, pp. 11-48.
Required reading: Rhodri Hayward: The tortoise and the love-machine: Grey Walter and the politics of electroencephalography. Science in Context 14: 615-641, 2001.
Required reading: Peter Galison: The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision. Critical Inquiry 21: 228- 266, 1994.
Required reading: N. Katherine Hayles: Flesh and metal: reconfiguring the mindbody in virtual environments. In: Data Made Flesh (edited by Robert Mitchell & Phillip Turtle). New York: Routledge 2004, pp. 229-248.
Further reading: Michael Hagner: Toward a history of attention in culture and science. MLN German Issue 118: 670-687, 2003.
24 March 2005 Cyborgs with and without an inner side
Source text: Daniel Stephen Halacy: Cyborg: evolution of the superman. New York: Harper & Row 1965.
Source text: Donna Haraway: A cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialist feminism in the late twentieth century. In: Simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge 1991, pp. 149-181. Book assignment: Donna J. Haraway: Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_ OncoMouseTM : feminism and technoscience, New York: Routledge 1997.
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Required reading: Anne Marie Balsamo: Reading cyborgs, writing feminism: reading the body in contemporary culture. In: Technologies of the gendered body: reading cyborg women, Durham: Duke University Press 1996, pp. 17-40.
Required reading: Dan Heggs: Cyberpsychology and cyborgs. In: Cyberpsychology (edited by Àngel J. Gordo-López & Ian Parker). London: MacMillan 1999, pp. 184-201.
Required reading: Jill Marsden: Cyberpsychosis: feminization of the postbiological body. In: Cyberˇpsychology (edited by Àngel J. Gordo-López & Ian Parker). London: MacMillan 1999, pp. 59-76.
Required reading: Steve Mann & Hal Niedzviecki: Reinventing the cyborg. In: Cyborg: digital destiny and human possibility in the age of the wearable computer. Toronto: Doubleday Canada 2001, pp. 77-127.
Required reading: Probings: an interview with Stellarc.In: The cyborg experiments: the extensions of the body in the media age (edited by Joanna Zylinska ed.). New York: Continuum 2002, pp. 114-130.
Further reading: Finn Bowring: Science, seeds and cyborgs: biotechnology and the appropriation of life. New York: Verso 2003. [Chaper 11, The cyborg solution, pp. 259-277]
Further reading: Evelyn Fox Keller: The dilemma of scientific subjectivity in postvital culture. In: The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power (edited by Peter Galison & David J. Stump). Stanford: Stanford University Press 1996, pp. 417-427. Further reading: Hélène Mialet: Do angels have bodies? Two stories about subjectivity in science: the cases of William X. and Mister H. Social Studies of Science 29: 551-581, 1999.
31 March 2005 Posthumanism
Source text: Stellarc: From psycho-body to cyber-systems: images as post-human entities. In: Virtual futures: cyberotics, technology and post-human pragmatism (edited by Joan B. Dixon & Eric J. Cassidy). New York: Routledge 1998, pp. 116-123.
Source text: Sarah Kember: Get ALife : cyberfeminism and the politics of artificial life. In: Digital desires: language, identity and new technologies (edited by Cutting Edge, the Women's Research Group). London: I. B. Tauris 2000, pp. 34-46.
Book assignment: N. Katherine Hayles: How we became posthuman : virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1999.
Book assignment: Chris Hables Gray: Cyborg citizen: politics in the posthuman age. New York: Routledge 2001.
Required reading: Chris Hables Gray: Posthuman possibilities. In: Cyborg citizen: politics in the posthuman age. New York: Routledge 2001, pp. 187-201.
Required reading: Félix Guattari: Regimes, pathways, subjects. In: Incorporations (edited by Jonathan Crary & Sanford Kwinter). New York: Zone Books 1992, pp. 10-37.
Required reading: Slavoj ÎiÏek: Cyberspace, or the unbearable closure of being. In: Endless night: cinema and psychoanalysis, parallel histories (edited by Janet Bergstrom). Berkeley: University of California Press 1999, pp. 96-125.
Further reading: Nigel Thrift: Bare life. In: Cultural bodies: ethnography and theory (edited by Helen Thomas and Jamilah Ahmed). Oxford: Blackwell 2004, pp. 145-169.
7 April 2005 Presentations, concluding discussions
Prerequisites: CMNS 221 or 223 (Cultural Studies) and CMNS 240 or 253 (Political Economy or Technology)
This course explores the relation between technology and the human body from the Machine Age to the Age of Information. Students will be introduced to historical texts expounding philosophical and political ideas that inform contemporary debates on new technologies. For example, students will be asked to critically question Cartesian ideas about the mind-body split that underpin debates on whether artificial intelligence and virtual reality result in the obsolescence or the evolution of the human body. The first section of the course examines the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers who viewed “the machine” as a marvelous new model for human/nature. Students will also read dystopic texts by 20th Century theorists who began to challenge the equation of progress with technological innovation after they 8 witnessed the environmental and social destruction resulting from military and industrial uses of technology. The course concludes with theories by contemporary feminists on cyborgs. In particular, we will read work that examines the ideas of Donna Haraway, for example, the work of Anne Balsamo who propose that cybernetic human-machine hybrids not only radically reconfigure what it is to be human but also challenge traditional epistemologies based on distinctions between humans, technology and nature.
Required Reading: A courseware package will be available at the SFU bookstore and you will need to access articles on-line (listed in the weekly readings)
Assignments: Seminar participation 10% Presentation 10% Written Assignment #1 20% Written Assignment#2 20% Final Take-home Exam 40%
The School expects that the grades awarded in this course will bear some reasonable relation to established university-wide practices with respect to both levels and distribution of grades. In addition, the School will follow Policy T10.02 with respect to "Intellectual Honesty," and "Academic Discipline" (see the current Calendar, General Regulations Section).
Seminars: After an introductory lecture or discussion led by the instructor, the class will use a seminar- format to discuss the weekly readings. Depending on the number of the students enrolled, you will be required to give from one to two presentations. The seminars will provide you with the opportunity to discuss the concepts and themes from the lectures and readings. They will also be a forum where you can raise questions about the lectures, readings and your assignments.
(a) Participation (5): Your participation will be based on the quality of your verbal contributions to the discussions (i.e. the extent to which you demonstrate how carefully you have read the assigned readings). (b) Attendance (5): Beginning with the second week of classes, your attendance will be recorded. Thereafter, 1/2 a mark out of a total of 5 will be deducted for each class that you miss.
Seminar Presentation (10): Each student is responsible for giving at least one presentation on one of the required weekly readings. You need to demonstrate your (a) comprehension of the article and (b) independent assessment, in particular, the ability to question or apply some of the main ideas. *Bring a 1-page handout with a summary of your presentation for everyone in the seminar *Your presentation should not exceed 20 minutes
STEP 1 What is the Article About?: Comprehension Give a concise summary of the main argument. a. what is the main topic? b. what are the main question/s or problem (hypothesis) raised by the author? c. what are the main concepts? Can you define them? d. what are the conclusions? How does the author substantiate the conclusions?
STEP 2 Assessment/Analysis of the Article: Your View To assess the argument and its implications, consider two or more of the following questions: a. does the author successfully make her or his conclusions? If so, underline this in STEP 1 b. do the ideas of the author reinforce or challenge conventional wisdom? Explain. c. does the argument have limitations? For e.g., is it based on faulty internal logic or problematic assumptions regarding, for e.g. or ethical concerns, the operation of the human mind, etc. Does the author overlook information relevant to the topic under consideration? d. What are the social and political implications of the conclusions?
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STEP 3 Example a. Find an example that either disproves or illustrates one of the article’s main points or your own assessment.
STEP 4: Questions: Issues Raised by the Article a. Prepare 2 questions regarding an idea, argument from or application of the reading for class discussion b. Be prepared for questions of clarification.
1st Assignment (20) WEEK 6 February 14: In Week 4 you will receive instructions for a short written assignment (1250 words on Descartes).
2nd Assignment (20) WEEK 9 March 7 : In Week 7 you will receive instructions for your second assignment (1250 words).
Final Examination (40): APRIL 11th • email an attachment to [email protected] • drop off a hardcopy to the HC continuing education office by 5PM) Your final exam will be a take-home exam. You will be required to answer 3 essay questions from a list of questions. Most of the questions will draw directly from the course readings and seminar discussions. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
I. INTRODUCTION: CONCEPTUALIZING BODIES AND MACHINES
WEEK 1: THE BODY AND TECHNOLOGY: EVOLUTION OR DEVOLUTION? January 10 Required Reading 1) Ullman, Ellen (2002) “Programming the Post-human.” http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1111/1829_305/92589439/p1/article.jhtml 2) Meilaneder, Gilbert (1995) “Terra es Animata: On Having A Life” in Elshtain, Jean Bethke and J. Timothy Cloyd (eds) Politics and the Human Body: Assault on Dignity, London: Vanderbilt University Press: 5-22. 3) Porter, Roy (2003) Flesh in the Age of Reason, London: Penguin Books: pp.28-61 Background References
STRESS DIALECTIC between TECH & HUMANS 1) David Chandler (1995)“Technological or Media Determination” http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tecdet/tecdet.html 2) Sturken, Marita and Lisa Cartwright (2001) Practices Of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford, Oxford University Press. 3) Postmodern/modern http://carbon.cudenver.edu/%7Emryder/itc_data/postmodern.html (look at list of links under “Basics”)
WEEK 2: DOES FLESH MATTER? FEMINISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY January 17 Required Readings ULLMAN – – Oliver Sacks
1) Grosz, Elizabeth (1994) “Refiguring Bodies, ” in Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 3-24 2) Idhe, Don (1990) Technology and The Lifeworld: Garden to Earth, Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, pp. 1-30.
Background Readings: 10
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/feenberg/Ihde1.htm (criticism of Idhe)
WEEK 3 GHOST IN THE MACHINE: MIND-BODY DUALISM + THE MODERN SUBJECT January 24 Required Reading 1) In addition to 2) and 3) below chose either a. Descartes, Rene (1664) “The Description of the Human Body” http://www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/GMR/hmp/texts/modern/descartes/body/body.html b. Descartes, Rene (1664) “Treatise on the Human Being” http://www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/GMR/hmp/texts/modern/descartes/lhomme/lhomme.h tml 2) Descartes, Rene (1899) Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences Part V http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer- reldem?id=DesReas.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed& tag=public&part=6&division=div2 3) Crossley, Nick (2001) “Beyond Dualism” in The Social Body: Habit, Identity and Desire, London: Sage, pp. 8-21, 38-61.
Background References 1) Descartes, 1899 Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences Part IV http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer- reldem?id=DesReas.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=publ ic&part=5&division=div2
2) Introduction to the History of Modern Philosophy: Mind and Body http://www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/GMR/hmp/modules/ihmp0304/units/unit09/descartes.html
II. MODERNITY AND TECHNOLOGY: A “MAN-MADE” FUTURE?
WEEK 4 TECHNOLOGY AND POWER OVER LIFE January 31 Required Readings 1) Merchant, Carolyn (1990) The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, New York: Harper Colin, pp. 1-6, 42-50, 216-235
2) Nelson, Victoria (2001) The Secret Life of Puppets, Cambridge: Harvard University Press: 25- 74.TOO DIFFICULT
Background Reading 1) Beaune, Jean-Claude (1989) “The Classical Age of Automata: An Impressionistic Survey from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century,” in Michel Feher (ed) Zone 3: Fragments of a History of the Human Body, New York: Urzone, pp. 430-480. 2) Wood, Gaby (2002) Living Dolls: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life, London: Faber and Faber.
WEEK 5 MACHINES AND UTOPIA: THE 18th & 19th CENTURIES February 7 Required Readings 1) Idhe, Don (1986) Consequences of Phenomenology, Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 79-115 11
2) Ashworth, William (2002) “England and the Machinery of Reason 1780-1830” in Iwan Rhys Morus (ed), Bodies/Machines, Oxford: Berg, pp. 39-65
Background Reading 1) Marx, Karl (1977) “Machinery and Large-Scale Industry” Capital Volume One, New York: Vintage Books, pp. 544-552, 553-564.
WEEK 6 TECHNOLOGY, TOTALITARIANISM AND DYSTOPIA February 14 Required Readings 1) Feenberg, Andrew (1995) “Dystopia and Apocolypse” in Alternative Modernity: the Technological Turn in Philosophy and Social Theory, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 41-74 1) Ellul, Jacques (1964) The Technological Society, New York: Vintage, pp. 3-23, 319-332.
Background Reading 1) Marx, Leo (1997) “Does Improved Technology Mean Progress?” in Albert H. Teich (ed) Technology and the Future, New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 3-14.
III THE BODY AS THE SITE OF POWER AND KNOWLEDGE: TECHNOLOGIES OF CONTROL
WEEK 7 POLITICAL TECHNOLOGIES: SUBJUGATION AND THE SUBJECT February 21 Required Readings 1) Foucault, Michel (1979) “The Means of Correct Training” in Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, New York: Vintage, pp. 170-194 2) Foucault, Michel (1979) “Panopticism” in Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, New York: Vintage, pp. 195-230 3) Smart, Barry (1985) Michel Foucault Chicester: Ellis Horwood: 71-120.
WEEK 8 BIO-POWER: FROM THE INDIVIDUAL BODY TO THE POPULATION February 28 Required Readings 1) Stacey, Jackie (1997) “Bodies” in Teratologies: A Cultural Study of Cancer, London: Routledge, pp. 97-136.
2) McLaren, Angus (1990) Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885-1945 Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, pp. 13-27, 68-88. 3) Grosz, Elizabeth (1994) “Lived Bodies: Phenomenology and the Flesh,” in Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press: 86-111. TOO DIFFICULT – SOBCHACK??? Or an article on biolife
WEEK 9 BIOTECHNOLOGIES: FROM THE BODY TO THE GENE March 7 Required Readings
LE BRETON GENETIC FUNDAMENTALISM Body & Society V10 #4 1) Franklin, Sarah (2005) “Stem Cells R Us: Emergent Life Forms and the Global Biological” in Aihwa Ong and Stephen J. Collier (eds) Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, Oxford: Blackwell: 59-76. 2) Roszak, Theodore (1994) The Cult of Information: A Neo-luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking, Berkeley: University of California, pp. 3-46. 12
Background Readings 1) Rabinow, Paul (1999) “ Artificiality and Enlightenment: from Sociobiology to Biosociality” in Mario Biagioli (ed) The Science Studies Reader, New York: Routledge, pp. 407-416. 2) Turney, Jon (1998) Frankenstien’s Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture, London: Yale University Press
IV CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSGRESSIONS: THE BODY, TECHNOLOGY AND NEW FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE
WEEK 10 NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND THE REDUCTION TO PASSIVE FLESH March 14 Required Readings 1) Virilio, Paul(1995)The Art of the Motor, Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, pp. 99-32. 2) Robins, Kevin (1996) Into the Image: Culture and Politics in the Field of Vision, London: Routledge, pp. 11-34.
WEEK 11 Feminist Theory and the Cyborg: Postmodern Subject? March 21 Required Readings 1) Wolmark, Jenny (1999) “ Introduction and Overview” Jenny Wolmark (ed) Cybersexualities: A Reader on Feminist Theory, Cyborgs and Cyberspace, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp.1-10. 2) Goodall, Jane (2000) “An Order of Pure Decision: Un-Natural Selection in the Work of Stelarc and Orlan” in Mike Featherstone (ed) Body Modification, London: Sage, pp. 149-170. 3) Springer, Claudia “Psycho-cybernetics in Films of the 1990s” in Annette Kuhn (ed) Alien Zone II: the Spaces of Science Fiction Cinema, London: Verso, pp, 203-218.
Background Reading 1) Stone, Allucquere Rosanne (1999) “’Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?’: Boundary Stories about Virtual Culture” in Jenny Wolmark (ed) Cybersexualities: A Reader on Feminist Theory, Cyborgs and Cyberspace, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp.69-98.
WEEK 12 The Future?: the Body, Technology and Politics March 28 Required Readings 1) Balsamo, Anne (1999) “Reading Cyborgs, Writing Feminisms: Reading the Body in Contemporary Culture” in Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 17-40. 2) Hayles, Katherine N. (1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cyberspace, Literature, and Informatics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-24
WEEK 13 REVIEW