 SYLLABUS
Special Topics in Technology Studies:
Heidegger & Deleuze
Doctoral seminar for Fall 2009
Course numbers (cross-listed): MCC, E57.3151.001; Comp Lit, G29.3151.001
Time: Wednesdays from 2 - 4:10pm
Location: Bobst Library, room LL1-41
Two starkly different thinkers, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Gilles
Deleuze (1925-1995) offer some of the most important theories of
technology in the twentieth-century. Heidegger views technology insofar
as it extends or departs from man's being in the world, while for
Deleuze the world itself is filled with "machinic" entities, from the
pervasive layers of the machinic phylum all the way up to desiring
machines and war machines. In this doctoral seminar we will perform
close readings of both authors, focusing on their analyses of
technology, tools, objects, machines, art, dwellings, and media.
While Heidegger was coopted by deconstruction and Deleuze was often
(incorrectly) labeled a poststructuralist, both writers are notable in
that they are technically outside the core canon of "critical
theory"--loosely defined as the Marxian and Freudian tradition of
socio-cultural critique beginning with the Frankfurt School--while
nevertheless remaining two of the most influential writers in that same
theoretical tradition. Both Heidegger and Deleuze constructed entire
philosophical projects that offer alternatives to the growing
disorientation and alienation brought on by the technologies of modern
life. For Heidegger it is the Greeks, particularly the presocratic
philosophers, who gesture the way forward. For Deleuze it is a special
minoritarian sub-category of philosophy, a cobbled-together bibliography
of what might be called "radically materialist" philosophers
hand-selected from throughout history (Heraclitus, Spinoza, Hume,
Bergson, Whitehead, and so on).
Heidegger is, in Alain Badiou's recent assessment, the "last universally
recognized philosopher." First we devote our attention to selections
from Heidegger's Being and Time, in which he unifies subject and object
under the banner of Dasein, that special mode of being ascribed to us.
Next we consider Heidegger's later essays on technology, focusing on his
treatment of tools, things, dwellings, and art.
Deleuze is perhaps best known for one of his collaborative books with
Félix Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus. We will read sections from this
signal work, coalescing around what is arguably the most important
concept for understanding technological change over the last few
decades, the rhizome. We will deepen our understanding of Deleuze
by reading his important early text The Logic of Sense,
as well as a book on art as technics from Deleuze's
"aesthetic period" during the 1980s.
Part I. Martin Heidegger
September 9
Course Introduction
September 16
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (chapters 1-7, 9, and 12).
September 23
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (chapters 14-18, and 22-27).
September 30
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (chapters 28-38).
October 7
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (chapters 39-42, 50-53, 60, 62, and 64).
October 14
G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (excerpt on the master-slave dialectic).
Karl Marx, "Estranged Labour."
Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology."
Martin Heidegger, "The Age of the World Picture."
The Ister (first half).
October 21
Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art."
Martin Heidegger, "Building Dwelling Thinking."
Martin Heidegger, "The Thing."
Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation."
The Ister (second half).
October 28
Martin Heidegger, "The Self-Assertion of the German University," and "The Rectorate 1933/34: Facts and Thoughts."
Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question.
Part II. Gilles Deleuze
November 4
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, pp. 1-108.
November 11
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, pp. 109-185.
November 18
Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation.
Supplementary color plates
November 25
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.
1. Introduction: Rhizome
2. 1914: One or Several Wolves?
4. November 20, 1923: Postulates of Linguistics
9. 1933: Micropolitics and Segmentarity
December 2
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.
6. November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?
7. Year Zero: Faciality
11. 1837: Of the Refrain
December 9
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.
12. 1227: Treatise on Nomadology:--The War Machine
14. 1440: The Smooth and the Striated
15. Conclusion: Concrete Rules and Abstract Machines
(Optional: 13. 7000 B.C.: Apparatus of Capture)
* * *
Required Materials
Note: Students proficient in French or German are encouraged to consult the texts in the original.
Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel Smith (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004).
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008 [reprint edition]).
Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Perennial Classics, 1971).
Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (Harper and Row, 1977).
The Ister (Avery Fisher: VCA 14592).
* * *
Course Assignments
Reading
All students are expected to read the assigned texts in advance of class.
Writing
Each student should write a total of 20 pages for the seminar, preferably split into two shorter papers of 10 pages each. Suggested paper topics will be provided, but students are also encouraged to create their own topics. All papers should be on par with doctoral level work and should demonstrate a close reading of the required materials and exhibit a methodology of critical analysis.
Grading Requirements
Each student will be evaluated based on the course assignments. All students will be expected to do the course reading, and to write seminar papers of approximately 20 pages total. Grades will be determined according to the following formula:
80% seminar paper(s)
20% in-class discussion
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