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The Politics of the Gaze: Sensory Formations of Modernity
MCC-GE 2112
Department of Media, Culture and Communication
The seminar will conduct a multi-site exploration of "the gaze” as an everyday life structure,
as the sensorial formation of modern experience and personhood, as a material culture of
simulation, as geography, as historical memory, as trans-cultural signification and as the
production of political scenography and violence. The mediatization and technological
development of vision and its dominance over the human sensorium is integral to the
emergence of the modern, including experiences of urbanism, consumer desire, spatial
experience, gender/sexual identities, race and ethnicity, trans-cultural image systems,
aesthetic production and the making of power and political truth claims. This seminar will
focus on introducing participants to the core theories and analytic methods of visual culture,
and the socio-political history of the human sensorium in a variety of disciplines, including
ethnography, social history, urban studies, cinema studies social geography, material culture
studies and media studies.
Seminar Requirements and Grading:
• Consistent attendance and participation in class discussion: 30%
• Mid-Term: 10%
• End Term Take Home Essay Exam 2 Questions 60%
Course Resource Materials:
Syllabus and All Readings in Classes Resources Section.
Learning Outcomes:
Students who successfully complete the course will be able to demonstrate:
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advanced understanding of research methodologies, vocabularies and procedures
appropriate to M.A.-PhD level work in Media Studies, Cultural Studies and
Visual Culture
•
advanced skills in the application of critical and interpretive vocabularies
•
Learn to write a critical literature review
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developed research, writing and communication skills
•
self-reflexivity as a research practitioner
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developed ability in identifying and addressing research objectives
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knowledge of a range of specific critical vocabularies, debates and concerns
focused on visual communication, visual culture, media, technology, and cultural
studies.
Class Code of Conduct:
• Recording devices, SMS messaging/email devices, or other portable
communication devices are not to be used during the class.
• Attendance is important to the success of this class and to your development as a
media expert. Each unexcused, absence will result in the lowering of your final grade.
Excused absences, such those for documented illness, family tragedy, religious
observance, or travel will not affect your grade. Five unexcused absences will
automatically result in failure for the course.
• Lateness is disruptive to the seminar environment, and prevents you from fully
participating and assimilating the information and materials discussed in class.
Excessive tardiness will lower your participation grade.
• Plagiarism is the unauthorized use of the words or ideas of another person. It is a
serious academic offense that can result in referral to the Committee on Academic
Misconduct and failure for the course.
• Student Work must be completed and submitted on time. All assignments should
be turned in when they are due.
• Eating in Class: NYU rules forbid food consumption in classrooms.
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September 8 - September 14
Introduction: The Politics of Light
September 15 - September 28
Frames:
Zanara, Jana 2009. Machiavelli’s Optical Arts: Political Theory, Action and Realism
(manuscript)
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, 1986. Panoramic Travel, The Compartment In the Railway Journey:
University of California Press Unbinding Vision October Spring, 21-44
Barthes, Roland, 1977. Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein. In Image Music Text. Hill and Wang.
Stanford University Press.
de Certeau, 'Michel 1984. Walking in the City In The Practice of Everyday Life. University of
California Press , pp 91-110.
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September 29 - October 5
Attention/Inattention:
Saint-Amour, Paul K 2003. Modernist Reconnaissance Modernism/modernity - Volume 10,
Number 2: pp. 349-380.
Kaes, Anton 1993. The Cold Gaze: Notes on Mobilization and Modernity, New German
Critique No 59, Summer, pp 24-26.
Crary, Jonathan. 1994 Unbinding Vision October, Vol. 68. (Spring,), 21-44.
Beller John, 2006/07 Cabinet, Paying Attention Issue 24 Shadows Winter
October 6 - October 12
Punition:
Mizuta Lippit, Akira. 2002 The Death of an Animal Film Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1.
(Autumn,), 9-22.
Tagg, John. (1988). Evidence, Truth and Order: Photographic Evidence and the Growth of
the State. In The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories.
University of Minnesota Press.
October 13 - October 19 (Fall Recess October 14-15) Midterm Due Oct 21
No Class
October 20 – October 26:
Mnemotechniques:
Derrida, Jacques. 2005 Paper or Me. In Paper Machine, Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Steigler Bernard, n. d. Anamnesis And Hypomnesis: Plato as The First Thinker of The
Proletarianisation
Benjamin, Walter The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility Second
Version
October 27- November 2
Archives:
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Forster Hal. 2004 An Archival Impulse, October 110, Fall, Pp. 3–22.
Ernst, Wolfgang(1994) Arsenals of Memory The archi(ve)texture of the Museum
www.mediamatic.net/article-5884-en.html.
Kempadoo, Roshini. (2004), Ghosting' (In)Visibility and Absence of Racialized
Caribbean Landscapes Feminist Review, No. 77, Labour Migrations: Women on the
Move, 125-128.
______[2000]Imaging historical traces: Virtual Exiles project
[http://www.mediascot.org/exiles/ve/index.html]
November 3 - November-9
Ethics of the Face:
Agamben, Giorgio. 2000 Notes on Gesture, Face. In Means Without Ends, Minneapolis,
University of Minneapolis Press.
Richter, Gerhard. 2000 Benjamin’s Face: Defacing Fascism. In Walter Benjamin and the
Corpus of Autobiography. Detroit Wayne State
Squiers, Carol, ed. 1997 2003 The Stranger: The First ICP Triennial of Photography and
Video. New York. The International Centre of Photography. (essays by Bauman, Benjamin,
Simmel, de Certeau et. al.
November 10 - November 16
Defacement:
Lincoln Bruce 1985 Revolutionary Exhumations in Spain, July 1936 Comparative Studies in
Society and History, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Apr.,), pp. 241-260
Agamben, Giorgio. 2007 In Praise of Profanation. In Profanations. Cambridge: Zone Books.
Bloch E. (1970) 'Entfremdung, Verfremdung': Alienation, Estrangement. The Drama
Review: TDR 15(1): 120–25.
November 17-23
From the Sight/Site of the Other
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Lacan, Jacques. 1977. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I . In Ecrits.
W.W. Norton and Company.
Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel. 1991 The Statue Man in Lacan: the Absolute Master, Stanford
University Press. Hopkins University Press.
November 24-30
Traumatic Realism:
Feldman, Allen, 1994. On Cultural Anesthesia From Desert Storm to Rodney King,
American Ethnologist, 21/2. May.
Foster, Hal, 1996. Death in America: Shocked Subjectivity and Compulsive Visual
Repetition." October, Vol. 75.
Doherty, Brigid. 1997 We are All Neurasthenics” or, The Trauma of Dada Montage, Critical
Inquiry 24, Autumn, pp. 82-132
December 1 -December 7
Full Spectrum Dominance:
Feldman, Allen, 2005. On the Actuarial Gaze: From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, Cultural Studies
Vol. 19, No. 2 March.
Feldman, Allen 1997. Violence and Vision: the Prosthetics, and
Aesthetics of Terror in Northern Ireland.” Public Culture, Volume 10, No. 1, Fall, pp 25-60.
Feldman Allen 2012, The Disputation Of Ashraf Salim: Apophatic Sovereignty Before The
Law At Guantanamo Cultural Studies, Fall no. 4 2012, iFirst article, pp. 1_29
Taussig, Michael 2007. Zoology, Magic, and Surrealism in the War on Terror, Critical
Inquiry 34, suppl. (Winter Supplement 2008), pp. 98-116.
December 8 -December 14
Witnessing the Unwitnessable:
Didi-Huberman, George 2012. Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz,
Selected Chapters Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Final Paper Due 12/21