Readings:

See Description

Course Description:

Is the “self” of Rousseau’s Confessions the same as the self of the 21st century digital selfie? To what extent is subjectivity bound up in the means of its technical mediation? This course stages an encounter between histories of autobiography, theories of the subject/subjectivation, and recent developments in media theory. We will ask how the “private self” of an earlier colonial modernity was given form in the novel and the autobiography, then explore how the invention of photography and film refashioned the subject as “ideally visible,” before considering how digital media cultures generate forms of subjectivity for which the defining imperative would no longer be confession but rather circulation.

We will spend some time with Foucault’s discussions of the confessional imperative that situates sexuality at the opaque foundation of the modern subject, reading them in relation to critical commentaries on the production of the “I” in literature and philosophy (works by Butler, Paige, Lucey, De Man). We will explore the interrelation of medium, subjectivity, and apparatus in theoretical works by Althusser, Deleuze, Debord, Baudrillard, Stiegler, Preciado, and others. Throughout, we will draw on specific examples of autobiography and/or self-portraiture in various media forms, from Rousseau to Proust, Varda, Godard, Sophie Calle, and contemporary vloggers. Taught in English, with texts available in French or English translation.

Additional Information:

Meets the Graduate Certificate in Global Urban Humanities elective requirement

Section times and locations in the Schedule of Classes