weekly schedule

session 1: introduction

Websites:

Traumwerk: http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/

Material World: http://www.materialworldblog.com/

session 2: fetishized objects

Ellen, Roy. 1988. Fetishism. Man (N.S.) 23:213-35. COURSEWORKS

Marx, Karl. 1990 [1865]. The fetishism of commodities and the secret thereof. In Capital, vol. 1, pp. 125-. Penguin Classics.

Mitchell, W. J. T. 1986. The rhetoric of iconoclasm: Marxism, ideology and fetishism. In Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, pp. 160-208. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Pels, Peter. 1998. The spirit of matter: on fetish, rarity, fact and fancy. In Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces, edited by Patricia Spyer, pp. 91-121. Routledge, New York.

Of Related Interest:

Appadurai, Arjun. 1986. Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Arjun Appadurai, pp. 3-63. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Stallybrass, Peter. 1998. Marx’s coat. In Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces, edited by Patricia Spyer, pp. 183-207. Routledge, New York.

session 3: psychologized objects

Baudrillard, Jean. 2005 [1968]. The non-functional system, or subjective discourse. In The System of Objects, pp. 75-114. Verso, New York.

Freud, Sigmund. 1961 [1927]. Fetishism. In The Standard Editino of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud vol. XXI, edited by James Strachey, pp. 152-157. The Hogarth Press, London.

Mitchell, W. J. Thomas. 2005. Totemism, fetishism, idolatry. In What Do Pictures Want?, pp. 188-196. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Stewart, Susan. 1993. Objects of desire. In On Longing: Narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection, pp. 132-170. Duke University Press.

Williams, Emma and Alan Costall. 2000. Taking things more seriously: psychological theories of autism and the material-social divide. Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture, edited by Paul M. Graves-Brown, pp. 97-111. Routledge, New York.

Of related interest:

Lacan, Jacques. 1977 (1949). The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Theory. In Écrits—A Selection. Tavistock Publications.

session 4: socialized objects

Hoskins, Janet. 2006. Agency, biography and objects. In Handbook of Material Culture, edited by Chris Tilley, Webb Keane, Susanne Küchler, Mike Rowlands, and Patricia Spyer, pp. 74-84. Sage Publications, London.

Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Arjun Appadurai, pp. 64-94. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Miller, Daniel. 2001. Alienable gifts and inalienable commodities. In The Empire of Things, edited by Fred R. Myers, pp. 91-115. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe.

Munn, Nancy. 1970. The transformation of subjects into objects in Walbiri and Pitjantjatjara myth. In Australian Aboriginal Anthropology, edited by R. Berndt, pp. 141-63. University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands.

Tilley, Christopher. 2006. Objectification. In Handbook of Material Culture, edited by Chris Tilley, Webb Keane, Susanne Küchler, Mike Rowlands, and Patricia Spyer, pp. 60-73. Sage Publications, London.

Of Related Interest:

Mauss, Marcel. 1990. The Gift. W. W. Norton, New York.

Myers, Fred R. 2001. Introduction: the empire of things. In The Empire of Things, edited by Fred R. Myers, pp. 3-61. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe.

Weiner, Annette. 1983. From words to objects to magic: Hard words and the boundaries of social interaction. Man, New Series 18(4):690-709.

session 5: sacred objects

Bataille, George. 1992 [1973]. Introduction and Part 1. In Theory of Religion, translated by Robert Hurley, pp. 11-61. Zone Books, New York.

Godelier, Maurice. 1999. The Enigma of the Gift. University of Chicago Press. (particularly Chapter 2: "Substitute objects for humans and for the gods", pp. 108-169)

Of Related Interest:

Berndt, Ronald M. 1983. Images of god in Aboriginal Australia. In Visible Religion, Annual for Religious Iconography, Vol. 2: Representations of Gods, edited by pp. 14-39. Brill, Leiden.

Geary, Patrick. 1986. Sacred commodities: the circulation of medieval relics. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Arjun Appadurai, pp. 169-91. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Lévy-Leblond, Jean-Marc. 2002. Galileo’s finger. In Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, pp. 146-147. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

session 6: problems of representation

Engelke, Matthew. 2005. Sticky subjects and sticky objects: the substance of African Christian healing. In Materiality (Politics, History, and Culture), edited by Daniel Miller, pp. 118-139. Duke University Press.

Keane, Webb. 1998. Calvin in the Tropics: objects and subjects at the religious frontier. In Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces, edited by Patricia Spyer, pp. 13-34. Routledge, New York.

Latour, Bruno. 2002. What is iconoclash? Or is there a world beyond the image wars. In Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, pp. 1-37. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. COURSEWORKS

Mitchell, W. J. Thomas. 2005. Offending images. In What Do Pictures Want?, pp. 125-144. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Sarró, Ramon. 2002. The iconoclastic meal: destroying objects and eating secrets among the Baga of Guinea. In Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, pp. 227-230. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. AVERY RESERVE

Stoddard, Heather. 2002. The religion of golden idols. In Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, pp. 436-453. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. AVERY RESERVE

Of Related Interest:

Keane, Webb. 1997. Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Koerner, Joseph. 2002. The icon and iconoclash. In Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, pp. 164-213. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Flood, Finbarr Barry. 2006. Image against nature: spolia as apotropaia in Byzantium and the dr al-Islml. The Medieval History Journal 9(1):143-166.

Konchok, Pema. 2002. Buddhism as a focus of iconoclash in Asia. In Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, pp. 40-59. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Freedberg, David. 1989. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

session 7: (TBA) presentations 1

session 8: technologized subjects

—    Marshall McLuhan (1964:45)

Ingold, Tim. 2000. Tools, minds and machines: an excursion in the philosophy of technology. In The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, pp. 294-311. Routledge, London.

Ingold, Tim. 2000. Society, nature and the concept of technology. In The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, pp. 312-322. Routledge, London.

Ingold, Tim. 2000. On weaving a basket. In The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, pp. 339-348. Routledge, London.

Ingold, Tim. 2000. Of string bags and birds’ nests. In The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, pp. 349-361. Routledge, London.

McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. The gadget lover: Narcissus as narcosis. In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, pp. 41-47. McGraw-Hill, New York.

McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Motorcar, the mechanical bride. In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, pp. 217-225. McGraw-Hill, New York.

session 9: subjectivized technologies

Eglash, Ron. 2006. Technology as material culture. In Handbook of Material Culture, edited by Chris Tilley, Webb Keane, Susanne Küchler, Mike Rowlands, and Patricia Spyer, pp. 329-240. Sage Publications, London.

Graves-Brown, Paul. 2000. Always crashing in the same car. In Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture, edited by Paul Graves-Brown, pp. 155-165. Routledge, New York.

Latour, Bruno. 2000. The Berlin key or how to do words with things. In Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture, edited by Paul Graves-Brown, pp. 10-21. Routledge, New York.

Riskin, Jessica. 2003. The defecating duck, or, the ambiguous origins of artificial life. Critical Inquiry 29(4):599-633. COURSEWORKS

Of Related Interest:

Bijker, Wiebe and John Law (editors). 1992. Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Law, John. 2002. Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in Technoscience. Duke University Press, Durham, NC.

Law, John and Michel Callon. 1992. The life and death of an aircraft: a network analysis of technical change. In Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, edited by Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, pp. 21-52. MIT Press, Cambridge. COURSEWORKS

session 10: beyond objects, beyond subjects

collective: Unlike society, which is an artifact imposed by the modernist settlement, this term refers to the associations of humans and nonhumans. While a division between nature and society renders invisible the political process by which the cosmos is collected in one livable whole, the word “collective” makes this process central. Its slogan could be “no reality without representation.”

— Bruno Latour (1999)

Cetina, Karin Knorr. 1997. Sociality with objects: social relations in postsocial knowledge societies. Theory, Culture & Society 14(4):1-30. COURSEWORKS

Latour, Bruno (as Jim Johnson). 1988. Mixing humans and nonhumans together: the sociology of a door-closer. Social Problems 35(3):298-310. COURSEWORKS

Latour, Bruno. 1994. Pragmatogonies: a mythical account of how humans and nonhumans swap properties. American Behavioral Scientist 37(6):791-808. COURSEWORKS

Latour, Bruno. 1999. Chapter 6: A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans. In Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, pp. 174-215. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Lee, Nick and Steve Brown. 1994. Otherness and actor network: the undiscovered continent. American Behavioral Scientist 37(6):772-290. COURSEWORKS

Of Related Interest:

Latour, Bruno. 2003. A prologue in form of a dialog between a Student and his (somewhat) Socratic Professor. Online paper: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/articles/index.html

See the special issue of American Behavioral Scientist 37(6) on Non-Human Agency.

session 11: further beyond objects, beyond subjects

Bennett, Jane. 2005. The agency of assemblages and the North American blackout. Public Culture 17(3):445-65.

Dant, Tim. 2006. Material civilization: things and society. The British Journal of Sociology 57(2):289-308. COURSEWORKS

Latour, Bruno. 2005. How to find one’s way in the literature under the heading Actor-Network-Theory. In Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, pp. 10-11. Oxford University Press, New York.

Braidotti, Rosi. 2006. Posthuman, all too human: towards a new process ontology. Theory, Culture & Society 23(7-8):197-208. COURSEWORKS

Of Related Interest:

Law, John. 2000. Objects, spaces and others. Online paper: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/research/resalph.htm#law

John Law on Actor-Network-Theory: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/staff/law/jlsts.html

session 12: toward things

Brown, Bill. 2001. Thing theory. Critical Inquiry 28(1):1-22. COURSEWORKS

Brown, Bill. 2006. Reification, reanimation, and the American uncanny. Critical Inquiry 32(2):175-207. COURSEWORKS

Heidegger, Martin. 2001. The Thing. In Poetry, Language, and Thought, pp. 165-182. Harper Collins, New York.

Tiffany, Daniel. 2001. Lyric substance: on riddles, materialism, and poetic obscurity. Critical Inquiry 32(2):72-98. COURSEWORKS

Of Related Interest:

Appadurai, Arjun. 2006. The thing itself. Public Culture 18(1):15-21.

Brown, Bill. 2002. The tyranny of things (trivia in Karl Marx and Mark Twain). Critical Inquiry 28(2):442-69. COURSEWORKS

Frow, John. 2001. A pebble, a camera, a man who turns into a telegraph pole. Critical Inquiry 28(1):270-285. COURSEWORKS

Liu, Lydia H. 1999. Robinson Crusoe’s earthenware pot. Critical Inquiry 25(4):728-757. COURSEWORKS

Plotz, John. 2005. Can the sofa speak? A look at thing theory. Criticism 47(1):109-118.

session 13: toward mind

Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Clarendon Press, New York.

Of Related Interest:

Bowden, R. 2004. A critique of Alfred Gell on Art and Agency. Oceania 74(4):309-324.

Knappett, Carl. 2006. Beyond skin: layering and networking in art and archaeology. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 16(2):239-51. COURSEWORKS

Layton, R. 2003. Art and agency: a reassessment. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9:447-64.

Leach, James. 2007. Differentiation and encompassment: a critique of Alfred Gell's theory of the abduction of creativity. In Thinking Through Things, edited by Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad and Sari Wastell, pp. 167-188. Routledge, New York.

Pinney, Christopher and Nicholas Thomas (editors). 2001. Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment. Berg, New York.

session 14: materiality

Miller, Daniel. 2005. Materiality: an introduction. In Materiality (Politics, History, and Culture), edited by Daniel Miller, pp. 1-50. Duke University Press.

Ingold, Tim. 2007. Materials against materiality. Archaeological Dialogues 14(1):1-16. COURSEWORKS

Knappett, Carl. 2004. The affordances of things: a post-Gibsonian perspective on the relationality of mind and matter. In Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World, edited by Elizabeth DeMarrais, Chris Gosden, and Colin Renfrew, pp. 43-51. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge.

Renfrew, Colin. 2004. Towards a theory of material engagement. In Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World, edited by Elizabeth DeMarrais, Chris Gosden, and Colin Renfrew, pp. 23-31. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge.

Of Related Interest:

Belting, Hans. 2005. Image, medium, body: a new approach to iconology. Critical Inquiry 31(2):302-319. [See Belting’s essay for the distinction between materiality and “mediality”.] COURSEWORKS

session 15: (TBA) presentations 2