Monday 31 October 2011

Program and some basic ideas:

First, to quote my sum-up from last year:


There is no one definition or approach to what culture is. This is why I did not begin from one, this is why I am ”walking” through different texts and theories which try to grasp what it is.

That culture is not a specific field of human activity, but the human being’s natural habitat – and it is not natural in the sense that the world around is natural, but it is always something that we make and produce; thus making and producing ourselves.

Wherefore ”culture” is not a nice little thing to keep in one’s living-room but an object of struggle reflecting social divisions, differences, relations of power.

And as it is the world we make and by making we make ourselves, we can never step outside culture and society and regard it from an objective vantage-point. We have to jump in in the middle, and literally try to grasp our world in motion, alive.

Which is why I am not giving you a list of textbook definitions about cultural phenomena, but introducing to you thinkers and theories, concepts and approaches that try to grasp what culture is and how it is made. And I am introducing original thinkers and their texts, because in their texts the thing we want to understand – culture, ourselves, the world – remain alive, and not severed into meaningless lists of words that bear no resemblance to true concepts.

And that we jump into this thinking and the texts in the middle as well – that these texts have hundred and thousands of years of discussion behind them, embedded into them.

This is also why I think it is good to read and discuss them in smaller groups, because thinking is not done alone and is not a one-way street. It is also something that is made and that in turn makes us.

Program for this year:

Note: I will be giving you a small excerpt of a text to read before each lecture - hopefully so you can be more ready with some questions for the lecture. For the final assignment you will form groups - free choice - choose a text and read it with the group, discuss what you have read and make a report of what you have found out or thought or wondered as you read for the last meeting.

31.10 Aristotle and human nature
3.11. Nietzsche and Freud
8.11. Marx (note: a Tuesday! 12 - 14)
10.11. Frankfurt School and Adorno
17.11. Benjamin
21.11. Levi-Strauss
24.11. Debord
28.11. Foucault
1.12. De Certeau

15.12 presentations by groups on what they discussed and thought of the text they choose. To be part of a general "Critique-day", where various courses will be presenting their works, and people can also bring individual works to be discussed. Our session will start to the day from 9 - 12.


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