ANT 210-001, Tue 3-6p, Young 224
Prof. Joseph Dumit, dumit@ucdavis.edu
Class is designed around learning to answer and re-answer the following questions:
- What can a body do?
- Where does a body end?
- How does a body feel?
- Does a body have a machine?
- How can a body be extended?
- How does a body end?
- More than one, less than two body?
- When does a body remember?
- How can a body be rendered?
These questions will be explored through individual and group projects. I will have syllabic choices, but everyone may read different things (texts, media, life), with the aim of working out knots of concepts and methods. Participants are required to read and post notes on reading: teaching others what has been read, and posing and expanding the questions, building up arguments not for the texts but for the concepts and methods.
These may be Spinoza (what can a body do? and Deleuze’s discussion of the indefinite article, a body); enhancement, drugs, cyborgs, supplements, exercises, evolution; phenomenology, embodiment, psychoanalysis, cybernetics; biology, death, violence, torture, abandonment, social movement; disability, training, sports, dancing, performance; development, human nature, sexuality, body parts, cells, muscles; assemblages, symbiosis, biopolitics, biocapital; anthropology, cultural studies, performance studies, design, medicine, philosophy, history, sociology, science, engineering, computer science, science & technology studies.
Everyone can read different things, but we have to address the same issues on wiki or other ground. Some key questions overall, and then specific ones within that. You will have to read and post their notes on reading: teaching others what has been read, and posing and expanding the questions, building up arguments, not for the texts, but for the concepts being worked on.
Syllabus Design – Also look through sample syllabi, research syllabi and readings according to your own discipline and interests, and then make a syllabus of 8 weeks. (don’t worry, it can change), if you are fascinated by an existing one, you can adapt it. the point is to choose readings that help you along whatever trajectory you think you are on.
Then each week you will apply your syllabus to that week’s question. Second Week’s Question: What can a body do? How many different ways do the different readings inspire you to answer this? Following weeks we will roll dice to decide which question we are answering.
– like readings, what do you learn from them that you didn’t know, a new body practice, because you then oppose it to your current ones. at least have two to compare, measure
– look for the affinities and the creative divergences
– how do they play with the questions in ways you (could not) have not thought of
“where does a body end?”
– Why? to open you up, give you more to follow, make you a better
participant & observer
Make a Blog – Posting
– Make a Blog – WordPress.com or Posterous.com
– 1st assignment is talk about your syllabus & announce your practice
– also start talking about at least one Companion piece for What can a body do?
Paper – Paper: 25 pages, topic TBA