Course Schedule:

Part 1: Dialectics, Labor, and the Commodity-Form

Week 1

Mon, 08/31:

Introductions and Statement of the Problem

Wed, 09/02:

Mao Tse Tung—“On Practice,” in Mao Tse Tung: Four Essays on Philosophy

Italo Calvino—If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (Self-paced; to be completed by the end of Week 5)

Week 2

Mon, 09/07:

*No Classes: Labor Day

Wed, 09/09:            

Mao Tse Tung—“On Contradiction”

Karl Marx—“Alienated Labour;” “Needs, Production, and Division of Labour”

Week 3

Mon, 09/14:    

*No Classes: Rosh Hashanah

Wed, 09/16:            

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels—“Wage-Labour and Capital”

Karl Marx—Karl Marx: Selected Works, Vol. 1, Introduction and essay, pp. 242-281; Capital, Vol. 1, Trans. Ben Fowkes (1990), Introduction, pp. 11-59

Week 4

Mon, 09/21:            

Karl Marx—Capital 1, Introduction, pp. 60-88; Preface to the First Edition and Postface to the Second Edition, pp. 89-103; Preface to the English Edition, pp. 109-113

Wed, 09/23:

*No Classes: Yom Kippur

Week 5

Mon, 09/28:            

Karl Marx—Capital 1, Ch. 1: “The Commodity;” Ch. 2: “The Process of Exchange,” pp. 125-187

Guy Debord—The Society of the Spectacle, Chs. 1-3: “Separation Perfected;” “The Commodity as Spectacle;” “Unity and Division within Appearances,” §§ 1-72

Film—The Society of the Spectacle, Dir. Debord (1973)

Wed, 09/30:            

Karl Marx—Capital 1, Chs. 6-7: “The Sale and Purchase of Labour-Power;” “The Labour Process and the Valorization Process,” pp. 270-306

Herbert Marcuse—“Liberation from the Affluent Society”

Week 6

Mon, 10/05:            

Karl Marx—Capital 1, Chs. 11-13: “The Rate and Mass of Surplus Value;” “The Concept of Relative Surplus Value;” “Co-operation,” pp. 417-454

Wed, 10/07:            

Karl Marx—Capital 1, Ch. 14: “The Division of Labour and Manufacture,” pp. 455-491

Week 7

M 10/12:            

Marx—Capital 1, Ch. 15: “Machinery and Large-Scale Industry,” pp. 492-564

Film—The Most Beautiful, Dir. Akira Kurosawa (1944)

Part 2: Material-Aesthetic Theory, Artistic Practices & Interventions

Wed, 10/14:

Walter Benjamin—“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

Week 8

Mon, 10/19:            

Martin Heidegger—“The Question Concerning Technology”

Heidegger—Poetry, Language, Thought, Ch. 2: “The Origin of the Work of Art”

Haruki Murakami—“Tony Takitani”, Trans. Jay Rubin

Film—Tony Takitani, Dir. Jun Ichikawa

Wed, 10/21:            

Junichirō Tanizaki—In Praise of Shadows

Edmund Burke—A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Week 9

Mon, 10/26:            

Leonard Koren—Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers

M.C. Richards—Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person, Ch. 1: “Centering as Dialogue,” pp. 9-32

Toshiko Takaezu—“A Thrown Form”

Video—Toshiko Takaezu: Portrait of an Artist

Wed, 10/28:

Ernst Fischer—The Necessity of Art: A Marxist Approach, Chs. 1-2, “The Function of Art;” “The Origins of Art”

Richards—Centering, Ch. 2: “Centering as Transformation,” pp. 33-56

Video—Lee Kang-Hyo: Onggi Master

Week 10

Mon, 11/02:            

Fischer—The Necessity of Art, Ch. 3: “Art and Capitalism”

The Situationist International, Unsigned—“The decline and fall of the spectacle-commodity economy”

Larry Neal—“The Black Arts Movement”

Huey P. Newton—“intercommunalism: February 1971”, in The Huey P. Newton Reader

Wed, 11/04:            

Fischer—The Necessity of Art, “Content and Form” thru “The Magic Cave”

Guy Debord—“Toward a Situationist International”

Lorna Simpson—Video installations: “Chess;” “Call Waiting;” “Corridor”

Week 11

Mon, 11/09:            

Fischer—he Necessity of Art, Ch. 4, “Content and Form”

Video—Masters of Photography: Diane Arbus

Video—Mary Ellen Mark: There is nothing more extraordinary than reality

Final Paper Consultations

Wed, 11/11:            

Fischer: The Necessity of Art, Ch. 5, “The Loss and Discovery of Reality”

Week 12

Mon, 11/16:            

John Dewey—Art as Experience, Ch. 1: “The Live Creature;” Ch. 2: “The Live Creature and ‘Etherial Things’”

Graham de la Rosa; Suzanne M. Schadl; ASARO—Getting Up for the People: The Visual Revolution of ASAR-Oaxaca, Introduction: Manifesting Visual Rebellion: “Pa’l Pueblo/For the People,” pp. 1-15; “Stand Up, Speak Up”, pp. 69-106

Wed, 11/18:            

Dewey—Art as Experience, Ch. 3, “Having an Experience”; Ch. 4, “The Act of Expression”

Gerlaine Kiamco—“Revolutionary Doesn’t Always Mean Armed Struggle: Identity and Art in ASARO”

Week 13

Mon, 11/23:            

Dewey—Ch. 5, “The Expressive Object”; Ch. 6, “Substance and Form”

Kitarō Nishida, Trans. William Haver—Ontology of Production, “Expressive Activity”, pp. 35-63

Wed, 11/25           

*No Classes: Thanksgiving

Week 14-Week 15: 11/30-12/09

Presentations

Week 16

Mon, 12/14:          

*Final papers due in class.

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