CS 301AK-01 (3759) Critical Theory B: For Futurity:
A Clash of Futurisms
When/Where:
Tuesdays/Thursdays, 4.15-7pm. Online (ONL-CS3)
Summer
Session, 2020, June 9-July 30 at the San Francisco Art Institute
Course Blog: aclashoffuturisms.blogspot.com
Instructor: Dale Carrico dcarrico@sfai.edu; ndaleca@gmail.com
Course Blog: aclashoffuturisms.blogspot.com
Instructor: Dale Carrico dcarrico@sfai.edu; ndaleca@gmail.com
Course
Description: Futurity is a register of freedom, "The Future" another
prison-house built to confine it. Futurity is the openness in the present
arising out of the ineradicable diversity of calculating, contending, and
collaborative stakeholders who struggle to make and remake the shared world.
"The Future," to the contrary, brandishing the shackle of its
definite article, is always described from a parochial present and is always a
funhouse mirror reflecting a parochial present back to itself, amplifying its
desires and fears, confirming its prejudices, reassuring its Believers that the
Key to History is in their hands. This course will stage a contest of futures:
Italian Futurism, corporate-military think-tank futurologies, Afro-Futurists,
punks, crips, queers, and some competing versions of posthumanism for good measure.
Both ranting and raving will be involved. In the end, I will send you out on
stage yourselves... and Into! The! Future!
In this
class we will distinguish (while also pressuring these distinctions):
1).
Futurity: The quality of openness inhering in the diversity of stakeholders to
any political present.
2). The
Future: Sites of imaginative investment, a Destiny/Destination at which
"We" never arrive.
3).
Futurisms: imagined and intentional communities, subcultures, memberships, and
fandoms organized and sustained through identification with particular visions
or narratives of The Future.
4).
Futurology: A parochially profitable pseudo-scientific discipline confusing
marketing with understanding, and the quintessential justificatory discourse
for white-racist patriarchal extractive-industrial corporate-militarism (ie, global
financialized "neoliberal" capitalism).
Grade
Provisionally Based on the Following: Attendance/Participation, 15%; Reading Notebook (3 Quotes/3
Questions/3 works), 15%; Mid-term Precis (2-3pp.), 15%; In-Class Presentation, 15%; Final Symposium
Presentation, 15%; Final Paper, 25%. (This is a rough basis for your final grade,
which is also subject to contingencies, improvement, and so on.)
Schedule of Meetings (Subject to Change, Check Online Version for Updates)
June
Week One: Futurity
Readings:
Jenny
Anderson, "The
Great Future Debate and the Struggle for the World"
Ted Goertzel, "Methods and Approaches of Future Studies"
Roland Barthes, from Mythologies, "The Nautilus and the Drunken Boat," “Jet-Man," "Plastic" (for the relevant passages scroll to pp. 65-67, 88-90, 97-99.)
Audrey Watters: The Best Way to Predict the Future Is To Issue A Press Release
Ted Goertzel, "Methods and Approaches of Future Studies"
Roland Barthes, from Mythologies, "The Nautilus and the Drunken Boat," “Jet-Man," "Plastic" (for the relevant passages scroll to pp. 65-67, 88-90, 97-99.)
Audrey Watters: The Best Way to Predict the Future Is To Issue A Press Release
Discussion,
Tuesday, June 9
Workshopping:
Syllabus
PRESENTATION(S):
Personal Introductions
Lecture,
Thursday, June 11
Week Two: Singularity
Readings:
John Perry Barlow, A
Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
Vernor
Vinge: Technological Singularity
Nathan Pensky: Ray Kurzweil Is Wrong
Jaron Lanier: The First Church of Robotics
Emily Drabinski, Ideologies of Boring Things: The Internet and Infrastructures of Race
Nathan Pensky: Ray Kurzweil Is Wrong
Jaron Lanier: The First Church of Robotics
Emily Drabinski, Ideologies of Boring Things: The Internet and Infrastructures of Race
Shannon Mattern, Databodies in
Codespace
Lecture,
June 16
Discussion,
Thursday, June 18
Workshopping:
Ethos, Pathos, Logos; Audience and Intentions.
PRESENTATION(S):
Week Three: Ecology
Readings:
Rob
Nixon, Slow Violence
John Bellamy Foster, Four Laws of Ecology and Four Anti-Ecological Laws of Capitalism
John Bellamy Foster, Four Laws of Ecology and Four Anti-Ecological Laws of Capitalism
Robert Bullard, Poverty, Pollution, and
Environmental Racism
Naomi Klein, Geo-Engineering:
Testing the Waters
Laurie
Anderson, “The Language of the Future” (performance)
Lecture,
Tuesday, June 23
Discussion,
Thursday, June 25
Workshopping:
The Toulmin Schema
PRESENTATION(S):
Week Four: Eugenics
Readings:
Peter
Cohen (dir.), Homo Sapiens 1900 (a documentary about 20C
eugenics)
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Race And/As Technology
Critical Arts Ensemble, Eugenics: The Second Wave
Alison Kafer, Imagined Futures from Feminist, Queer, Crip
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Race And/As Technology
Critical Arts Ensemble, Eugenics: The Second Wave
Alison Kafer, Imagined Futures from Feminist, Queer, Crip
Amy
Goodman interviews Harriet Washington about her
book Medical Apartheid: Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from
Colonial Times to the Present
Octavia Butler, The Evening,
the Morning, and the Night (short story)
Lecture, Tuesday, June 30
July
Discussion, Thursday, July 2
Workshopping: Aims of
Argument: Interrogation – Convinction – Persuasion – Reconciliation
PRESENTATION(S):
Precis due by end of
scheduled class session.
Week Five: No
Future!
Readings/Screenings:
Alfonso Cuaron (dir.),
Children of Men (film)
Lee
Edelman, The
Future Is Kid Stuff
Lecture,
Tuesday, July 7
Discussion,
Thursday, July 9
Workshopping:
Critical Film Terms
PRESENTATION(S):
Week Six: The Italian Futurists
Readings:
Valentine
de Saint-Point, Manifesto of
Futurist Women
Valentine de Saint-Point, Futurist Manifesto of Lust
Luigi Russolo, The Art of Noises
Valentine de Saint-Point, Futurist Manifesto of Lust
Luigi Russolo, The Art of Noises
Toxic
Titties, Mamaist Manifesto
Karen Pinkus, Futurism: Proto Punk
Karen Pinkus, Futurism: Proto Punk
Lecture,
Tuesday, July 14
Discussion,
Thursday, July 16
Workshopping:
Final Papers
PRESENTATION(S):
Week Seven: Afro-Futurists
“Africa
Is The Future”
Mark
Dery interviews Samuel
Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose
Tananarive Due, Afrofuturism: Dreams to Banish Nightmares
Nnedi Okorafor, The Magical Negro (this one page story is the first in Okorafor's wonderful collection Kabu Kabu, and the easiest way to read it free is just to preview the book at Amazon, and scroll to the story)
Nnedi Okorafor: On Stephen King's Super-Duper Magical Negroes
Tananarive Due, Afrofuturism: Dreams to Banish Nightmares
Nnedi Okorafor, The Magical Negro (this one page story is the first in Okorafor's wonderful collection Kabu Kabu, and the easiest way to read it free is just to preview the book at Amazon, and scroll to the story)
Nnedi Okorafor: On Stephen King's Super-Duper Magical Negroes
Lanre
Bakare, Afrofuturism Takes Flight: From Sun Ra to Janelle Monae
Janelle
Monae: “Dirty Computer” (short “emotion picture”) and selected other videos
(linked on the blog).
Lecture,
Tuesday, July 21
Discussion,
Thursday, July 23
Workshopping:
PRESENTATION(S):
Week Eight: Symposium
Symposium,
Day One, Tuesday, July 28 (program will appear online)
Symposium,
Day Two, Thursday, July 30 (program online, followed by housekeeping, last
chance Presentations, and concluding remarks).
Final
Paper due by end of final scheduled class session.
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