Allucquére Rosanne Sandy Stone - Seminars / Workshops / Lectures

SIMULATION OF BODY AND DESIRE: A demonstration of a reconfigured body in cyberspace and multiple selves between desire and technology. (3 credits)

Allucquére Rosanne Sandy Stone, Ph.D.

Description: In this course we will examine the traffic between conventional ideas of person and the reality of “true identities” and “quasi-identities” in cyberspace. We will discuss how the cultural meanings of technological prosthetics are negotiated and the increasingly impossible separation between real and virtual worlds. Further we will explore the imploding of boundaries between our technologies and ourselves; as we inexorably become creatures that we cannot even now imagine. And this course will introduce our life as cyborg, in our assembled forms and multiple selves right between the two towers of promise and danger, of desire and technology. This class is in seminar format. This means that your active participation is a requirement of the course. During the semester I expect you to contribute your own ideas and arguments to the discussion, and to be willing to take the risks such contributions imply.

Objectives: If you have read some of my work you will have noted that my methods involve the presentation of fragmented accounts or provocations, with a specific sub-agenda of disrupting attempts at closure on a common account. Therefore attempts to draw any sense of closure out of my own presentations is foredoomed. What I look for is resonances between our ideas as we discuss them in seminar. Please do not be misled into assuming that because I oppose closure there are no standards by which work can be judged. There are in fact quite palpable standards, but they may require unaccustomed modes of thought. I value your commitment to the discussion, your ability to articulate your thoughts, and your willingness to take sides and to risk stakes in the discourse, more than I do your ability to repeat theory back to me.

Learning Outcomes: Students, I expect that you have arrived in the seminar with ideas of your own, which may or may not match mine. The seminar then is a place for you to develop your work in light of the ideas and problems raised during our discussions. In general I see the role of the instructor as facilitator and guide. I provide some structured lectures during the first part of the semester. The rest of the time is devoted to relating those ideas to your own work.

Additional Comments/Warning:This course requires your full, active participation. If you are merely looking for three more units to make up your quota, you are likely to fail. Taking risks in class is encouraged, and rewarded appropriately. Consequently this course may not be a good choice if you are shy.

Class Outline:

Module One
8369 Nets, cyberspace and virtual systems.
The transgendered body and natural body. Nets as spaces of transformation and identity factories.
Transgender studies in relation to communication prosthetics.
Desire, gender and sexuality: Cause-effect interaction with the emergence of new communication prosthetics.

Module Two
Debates on the collapsing concepts of neurology and electronics, musculature and hydraulics, biology and technology.
The complex interplay of science fiction and fictions of science.
The traffic in the boundaries between art and technology.
Cyborgs as creatures living by choice in boundaries between subject positions of death and life, temporality and eternity, gay and straight, man and woman, good and evil.

Module Three
Monsters, gender, and battles over the meaning of "human".
Performance and performance theory; interface and interaction.
Nonpredicate communication.
Drive-by Theory and the act of making.

Required Readings and Assignments:

Stone, Allucquére Rosanne. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. MIT Press. October 1995. Hardcover, 212 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0262193620. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Stone, Allucquére Rosanne. "Violation and Virtuality: Two cases of physical and psychological boundary transgression and their implications." in: Halberstam, Judith (Editor), Ira Livingston (Editor). Posthuman Bodies (Unnatural Acts). Indiana University Press. December 1995. Hardcover, 275 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0253328942. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Stone, Allucquére Rosanne." Virtualitet og Krenkelser." in: Rasmussen, Terje (Editor). Kulturens Digitale. Aventura Forlag A/S. 1993. 377 pages, Language Norwegian, ISBN: 8258809822. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Stone, Sandy. "What Vampires Know: On Dangerous Knowledges and Eternal Life." Transcript of a talk by Allucgiven at In Control: Mensch-Interface-Maschine. at the Kunstlerhaus, Graz, Austria, May 1993.

Stone, Sandy. The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto. a net-version of the 1988 essay on identity, power, and authentic voice.

"Interview with Sandy Stone." in: Mondo. 2000.

Stone, Sandy. "Techno-Prosthetics and Exterior Presence: A Conversation With Sandy Stone." in: SPEED. V.1.2. Almost embarrassingly unedited, in that, wallowing in Tequila Sunrises and Santa Barbara warmth, I occasionally manage to sound like a tongue-tangled loon; but we had fun anyway...

NANOPHILOSOPHY: Invisible Revolution. (3 credits)

Allucquére Rosanne Sandy Stone, Ph.D.

Description: This course foregrounds the submicroscopic world of media and communications. We will examine the developing nature signaling and their troubled relationship with informatics of domination and control far beyond the Orwellian imaginary.

Objectives: At the end of the course students will have a firm grasp on the theoretical field which defines the emerging field of nanophilosophy. Through examining the current media scape from a micro perspective the macro understanding of the larger mediascape becomes possible. This course is key to any student interested in the tools of domination and control and how they become embeddd in a post-human world.

Learning Outcomes: This course is designed to enhance students knowledge about the progress of current techno-domination and give students the emancipatory language and inspiration to enter the political and critical debate surrounding issues of privacy, revolution and submicrosopic media communicaitons.

Required Books and Reading Assignments:

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0192860925. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Sturgeon, Theodore and Paul Wiliams. Microcosmic God: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon (Sturgeon, Theodore. Short Stories, V. 2.). North Atlantic Books, ISBN: 1556433018. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.