Teaching
CPLS G4855
The Digital in the Humanities
Fall 2012: Thursday 4:10pm-6:00pmGo to Courseworks »
INTRODUCTION
This seminar explores the emergence of new media and its vast implications for psychic and social transformation. We will examine significant moments, theoretical foundations, and current directions in the development of digital machines and pursue a series of dialogues with philosophy, psychoanalysis, social theory, arts and literature. Focusing on the role of technology, we begin by framing “the digital” in relation to the scientific and literary modernisms of the early 20th century. In light of these broad trajectories, we will investigate the invention of information theory, cybernetics, digital computing as well as the network systems and institutions of the Cold War.
In our discussion, we will consider the following questions: What constitutes a discrete symbol? When and how did particular symbols and inscription systems become universalized across media and across languages? Does the digital machine address the unconscious? In what ways do they alter the boundaries of sense and nonsense in how humans relate to their “meaningful” world? Can digital thinking be considered ideological? What is the relationship between the digital and the political? How do we reimagine the political beyond the “despotism of number” (Alain Badiou), or in spite of them?
These and other questions will guide our critique of the techné of the digital machine on the one hand and our reevaluation of received notions of language, writing, print, and communication on the other. We will pay close attention to the convergence of text, image, graphics, and design in digital media and try to understand the emerging forms of creative imagination. This seminar encourages students to develop their own comparative and cross-disciplinary research projects.
