Class Info

2009-01-19T02:29:00.000-08:00

Philosophy of Technology and the Body (PHIL 486A 001) is a Spring Philosophy course being offered at UBC. The interface of techne and bios will be conceptually explored in a multitude of guises: grotesque literature, contemporary politics, feminist philosophy, internet art, ancient poetry, transnational discourse - to name a few.

The course also includes an online component. Both attendance of the class and participation online is open to anyone. The class meets alternating Tues/Thu evenings throughout the semester (Tues Jan 13 6-9pm; Thu Jan 22 5:30pm-8:30pm; Tues, Thu - etc, EXCEPT Thu Feb 5, which will be changed to Tues Feb 3 6-9pm) in GEOG 201

any questions, or more info at xoxoxcom@gmail.com

Full Schedule

Tues Jan 13 6-9pm
Thu Jan 22 5:30-8:30pm
Tues Jan 27 6-9pm
Tues Feb 3 6-9pm
Tues Feb 10 6-9pm
Thu Feb 19 5:30-8:30pm
Tues Feb 24 6-9pm
Thu Mar 5 5:30-8:30pm
Tues Mar 10 6-9pm
Thu Mar 19 5:30-8:30pm
Tues Mar 24 6-9pm
Thu Apr 2 5:30-8:30pm (or till last week of classes whenever that is)

Weekly Outline With Potential Readings

2008-11-24T07:58:00.001-08:00

(Tentative: merely a list of popular nodes to reference, subvert or not – the class will be defined by the exceptions to these, their transgressions)

Week 1: Introduction: Considering Technology in Relation to the discourse of the Body (Hayles, Haraway)

Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers
http://www.english.ucla.edu/faculty/hayles/Flick.html

Full text of the Cyborg Manifesto

further reading:

Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (Paperback)
by Vivian Sobchack (Author)

Week 2: Posthumanism and The Cyborg: The Body in Technology (Haraway, Latour, Baudrillard)

How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, 1999
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/321460.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumanism - intro

Zaretsky, Adam (2005). "Bioart in Question".

1000 Years of War: CTHEORY Interview with Manuel De Landa http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=383 – Manuel de Landa on Posthumanism

further reading:
Latour, Bruno (1992). "Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts", pp. 225-258 in: Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, edited by W.E. Bijker & J. Law, MIT Press, USA.
Badmington, Neil (2000). Posthumanism (Readers in Cultural Criticism). Palgrave Macmillan

Week 3: Technological Determinism: Technology Determining the Body
(Kittler, Heidegger, Mcluhan, Latour)

Heidegger: The Question Concerning Technology
http://www.english.hawaii.edu/criticalink/heidegger/guide1.html

Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
http://www.hydra.umn.edu/kittler/preface.html
http://www.hydra.umn.edu/kittler/intro.html

The Gutenberg Galaxy
http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/mcluhanprojekt/gutenberg2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gutenberg_Galaxy

further reading:

The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man
Latour, Bruno (1996). Aramis, or the love of technology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., USA.

Week 4: Postmodernism and Simulacra: The Body in Technological Space (Baudrillard, Zizek, Lyotard)

Baudrillard:
http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/55/baudrillard55art.htm
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell26.htm
http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/theory/Mobius/tech.html

Lyotard's postmodern ethics and information technology:
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1040067&jmp=cit&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE

Zizek:
http://www.lacan.com/nosex.htm
The Cyberspace Real
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/zizek/zizek-the-cyberspace-real.html

Week 5: Feminism: Technology and Gender (Cixous, Hayles, Haraway)

Feminist approaches to technology
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu37we/uu37we07.htm

FEMINISM, TECHNOLOGY AND THE INFORMATION SOCIETY Learning from the past, imagining the future
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a790637676~db=all~jumptype=rss

http://www.overthere.com.au/digital/textfields.html

further reading:

Feminism Confronts Technology - by Judy Wajcman - 204 pages
Women Science and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies - by Mary Wyer
Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women By Anne Marie Balsamo
Cyber Selves: Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian Women By Radhika Gajjala

Week 6: The Internet: The Body and The Virtual Body (Dean, Negri/Hardt)

Dean:
http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id251/pg1/
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2006/75/dean.htm

Cybersalons and Civil Society
muse.jhu.edu/journals/public_culture/v013/13.2dean.html

Empire by Hardt & Negri (especially chap. 3.4 & maybe 2.5):
www.angelfire.com/cantina/negri/

further reading:

Publicity's Secret
How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy by Jodi Dean

Week 7: Electronic Literature: The Body Writing Technology (Hayles, eliterature.org, Landow)

Writing Machines supplement
http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/mediawork/titles/writing/writing_book.html

Electronic Literature: What Is It? - Hayles

Landow:
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/hyperead/postmod.htm

file: e-language int. festival:
http://www.file.org.br/index.php?content_id=176&sel=6.1&lang=en#

Montfort, Nick. 2005. "On Authorship, E-Lit, and Blogs." 'Grand Text Auto', http://grandtextauto.org

Examples:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/ezines/deluxe/
http://www.runran.net/remix_runran/
http://coupremine.com
http://warnell.com/index.htm
Epímone

Week 8: Bioscience & Disability: Technology on the Disabled Body in Science (Haraway, Birke)

Cyborg Manifesto

Tomorrow's Child - Reproductive Technologies in the 90's (Birke et al.)
http://bst.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/163-b

Moistmedia, Technoetics
http://www.isea2000.com/actes_doc/01_ascott.rtf

The body and disability: Prosthetics, proxemics and pratfalls
http://hsr.e-contentmanagement.com/archives/vol/4/issue/1/article/296

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_technology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosthesis

further reading:

Bodies, Commodities, and Biotechnologies: Death, Mourning, and Scientific Desire in the Realm of Human Organ Transfer (Leonard Hastings Schoff Lectures) by Lesley A. Sharp

Week 9: "Old" and New Media Art: The Body Creating Technologies (Fluxus, jodi, Volkart, codework)

Defining New Media Art:
https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/New+Media+Art+-+Introduction

Yvonne Volkart – Cyborg Bodies:
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/cyborg_bodies/

Codework:
http://eduspaces.net/camillepb/weblog/124996.html

www.fluxus.org/
http://jodi.org/
http://www.runran.net/remix_runran/
http://warnell.com/index.htm

Week 10: Bio-art: Technology on the Body in Art (Kac, Symbiotica, Bioteknika)

Intro:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17387568/
https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/New+Media+Art+-+Introduction

www.ekac.org/

Volkart on Biotech: http://www.thing.net/~tenacity/intro.html
http://www.asci.org/
http://www.critical-art.net/
http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/
http://www.martademenezes.com/
http://bioart.med.harvard.edu/bioart_introduction.html
http://www.bioteknica.org/

Week 11 & 12: Review, revisit authors of interest, discuss papers, or? – space for the class to decide.

philosophy of technology and the body

Class Info

Weekly Outline With Potential Readings