Syllabus
Part 1: Collective Readings
Geoghegan, Bernard Dionysius. 2013. “After Kittler: On the Cultural Techniques of Recent German Media Theory.” Theory, Culture, and Society 30.6: 66–82.
Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey. 2014. “The Kultur of cultural techniques: Conceptual inertia and the parasitic materialities of ontologization.” Cultural Politics 10.3: 376–388.
Chow, Rey. 1995. “Film as Ethnography; or, translation between cultures in the postcolonial world,” in R. Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, sexuality, ethnography, and contemporary Chinese cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 173–202.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. ‘Trains of Thought: The fifth Dimension of Time and its Fabrication,” in A. N. Perret-Clermont (ed.), Thinking Time: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Time, Göttingen: Hogrefe and Huber, 173–87.
Somaini, Antonio. 2016. “Walter Benjamin’s media theory: the Medium and the Apparat.” Grey Room 62: 6–41.
Part 2: Groups
Cinema/Body
Parker, Martin & Robert Cooper. 1998. “Cyborganization: Cinema as Nervous System,” in J. Hassard & R. Holliday (eds.). Organization/ representation: work and organizations in popular culture, London: Sage, 201–228.
Rutherford, Anne. 2011. “Cinema and Embodied Affect,” in A. Rutherford. What Makes a Film Tick? Cinematic Affect, Materiality and Mimetic Innervation. Bern: Peter Lang, 145 –164.
Kickasola, Joseph G. 2015. “It is a Restless Moment: Wong Kar-wai and the Phenomenology of Flow,” in M. P. Nochimson (ed.). A Companion to Wong Kar-wai. Chichester–Oxford: John Wiley, 2016, 47–79.
Game, Jérôme. 2001. “Cinematic Bodies. The Blind Spot in Contemporary French Theory on Corporeal Cinema.” Studies in French Cinema 1.1: 47–53.
Deleuze., Gilles. 1988. “On the Difference Between the Ethics and a Morality,” in G. Deleuze. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 17–29.
Grønstad, Asbjørn. 2016. “Six Theses on the Ethical Imagination,” in A. Grønstad. Film and the Ethical Imagination. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 85–99.
Sierek, Karel. 2013. “Image-Animism: On the History of the Theory of a Moving Term.” Images Re-vues, Hors-série 4.
Mauss, Marcel. 1973. “Techniques of the Body.” Economy and Society 2: 70–88.
Chamarette, Jenny. 2017. “Embodying Spectatorship: From phenomenology to sensation,” in K. L. Hole et al. (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Gender. New York: Routledge, 311–321.
Colman, Felicity. 2017. “Deleuzian Spectatorship,” in K. L. Hole et al. (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Gender. New York: Routledge, 322–331.
China/Body
Bao, Weihong. 2010. “The Politics of Remediation: Mise-en-scène and the Subjunctive Body in Chinese Opera Film.” Opera Quarterly 26.2: 256–290.
Liao, Sebastian Hsien-Hao. 2014. “Becoming Butterfly: Power of the False, Crystal Image and Taoist Onto-Aesthetics,” in R. Bogue, H. Chiu & Y.-L. Lee (eds.), Deleuze and Asia. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 1–28.
Bokenkamp, Stephen R. 2007. “What Daoist Body?,” in F.C. Reiter (ed.), Purposes, means and convictions in Daoism: A Berlin symposium. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 131–150.
Chen, Jack W. 2011. “Social Networks, Court Factions, Ghosts, and Killer Snakes: Reading Anyi Ward.” " T'ang Studies 29: 45–61.
Jullien, François. 2004. “Action or Transformation,” in F. Jullien, A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 46–60.
Jullien, François. 2009. “Image-Phenomenon: Painting Transformation and Life,” in F. Jullien, The Great Image Has No Form, On the Nonobject through Painting. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 227–240.
Wong, Kin-yuen. 2005. “Technoscience Culture, Embodiment and Wuda pian,” in M. Morris, S. L. Li, S.C. Ching-kiu, Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 269–286.
Hui, Yuk. 2016. “Qi and Dao in Daoism: Pao Ding's Knife,” in Y. Hui, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics. Falmouth: Urbanomic,
Annotation
The aim of this course is to attune students to a world, where that which gives itself to perception in seemingly immediate ways, is at the same time constructed. In the first part, which take the form of submitted homework, students will read and summarize texts. They are chosen as an complex introduction into the interdisciplinary (philosophy, media theory, anthropology of technology and religion, Chinese thought) research of this seminar. In the second part – an intensive one week course – we will specifically focus on learning to see with cinema and class readings. Most of the material is concerned with bodies and movements in Hong Kong action cinema with some excursions into French avant-garde cinema and thought. A large part of the intensive course then will consist of watching films, discussing their formal effects and thus gain a sense for the trans-cultural complexity of the reality process. In other words, this course seeks to create a “pedagogy of perception”.
This will be a block course taking place from 9.12. to 13.12. In the weeks prior you will have homework in the form of reading and writing assignments. There will be two axes of research: cinema/body and China/body. These readings will form the basis of class discussion and for learning to see with cinema. Some knowledge in contemporary philosophy is of advantage but not necessary. In case of excessive enrollment, preference will be given to religious studies students.