JUNE SESSION. June 1st – June 22nd, 2013
Media and Communication - June First Year First Group
Media and Communication - June First Year Second Group
Media and Communication - June Second Year First Group
Media and Communication - June Second Year Second Group
AUGUST SESSION. August 2nd - August 23rd, 2013
Media and Communication- August First Year First Group
Media and Communication - August First Year Second Group
Media and Communication - August Second Year First Group
Media and Communication - August Second Year Second Group
Note: Please be advised that all seminars, colloquia and workshops of EGS are conducted at the Steinmatte Campus in Saas-Fee, Wallis, Switzerland. (How to get to Saas-Fee by air, rail, and road.)
JUNE SESSION // June 1st – June 22nd, 2013.
Media & Communication: June First Year, First Group // June 1st – June 22nd, 2013.
Slavoj Žižek: HEGEL: NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY. (3 credits)
A provocative reading of Hegel which connects his so-called idealism to contemporary philosophical, psychoanalytical and aesthetic discussion, and the emphasis on Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Lacan, Quantum Theory, and the contingency as Hegel’s driving motive.
Thomas Zummer: MICHAEL FOUCAULT. (3 credits)
A critical reading of the philosopher Michel Foucault who changed our understanding of modernity with his inquiries into madness, punishment, sexuality and the technologies of the self.
Geert Lovink: POLITICS AND AESTHETICS OF THE WEB 2.0. (3 credits)
Provides an overview from blogs, search, online video, Wikipedia and social media to activist strategies like Wikileaks.
François Noudelmann: AFFINITIES IN PHILOSOPHY, ARTS, AND SCIENCE. (3 credits)
A transdisciplinary search for hidden patterns with revealing and concealing powers.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (TBC): THE COMMONS. (3 credits)
Revisiting the political sphere and its underlying philosophies and evaluating the potential for a perceptual change that includes the Internet.
Mitchell Joachim: ARCHITECTURE, URBAN AND ECOLOGICAL DESIGN. (3 credits)
In the tradition of Buckminster Fuller reviving the futurist vision of the fusion between urbanism, the shape of architecture, the construction of non-linear environments, synthetic biology – a bold approach to “Eutopia”, the good place to live.
Mandatory Seminars and Workshops:
Wolfgang Schirmacher: RESEARCH METHODS. (1 credit workshop for First Year students)
Introduction to basic research styles such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, dialectics, deconstruction in preparation for EGS dissertation projects.
Wolfgang Schirmacher: FOUNDATION IN MEDIA PHILOSOPHY. (1 credit workshop)
Introduces and explores the critical differences as well as productive blending of Communication Theory and Continental Philosophy which culminates in 'Media Philosophy'.
Elective Seminars and Workshops:
Wolfgang Schirmacher: RESEARCH FOR DISSERTATION. (1 credit workshop)
Discussing projects for Ph.D. dissertations in order to find connections to philosophical works and locate directions for theoretical research.
Media & Communication: June First Year, Second Group // June 1st – June 22nd, 2013.
Simon Critchley: PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS AND POLITICS. (3 credits)
This seminar will show how theory can bring us closer to understanding ‘where we are,’ and how we might think with and against the present.
Matthieu Potte-Bonneville: FOUCAULT AND ALETHURGY . (3 credits)
Discusses different aspects of Foucault's philosophy and the concepts of alethurgy and truth, focusing on the evolution of his inquiry on biopolitics, and the 'Right of death and power upon life' in "The Will of Knowledge".
Clem Marshall: UNINVENTING AFRIKA. (3 credits)
Before Rome's Carthaginian settlement led to the "Invention of Africa", Kushitic peoples had already invented themselves and launched cultures into space and time. For those who wear their ancestry as a trust today, "invented" Afrika continues to betray both history and full humanity. In this seminar we free up intellectual space on level ground for a transformative "Civilizational Dialogue" between "Kush" and "Afrika".
Sylvere Lotringer: JEAN BAUDRILLARD. (3 credits)
A tribute to the EGS faculty member who recently passed away: An examination of Jean Baudrillard's philosophical legacy and his impact on the critique of contemporary culture.
Alenka Zupancic: NIETZSCHE AND LACAN. (3 credits)
The courses will focus on two main questions, both in relation to Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and to Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis. Through discussion and readings this course willl examine focus around two themes, Negativity and Real.
Samuel Weber: MEDIA AND THE UNCANNY. (3 credits)
Explores the philosophical concept of the uncanny as it bears on the media by reading Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida.
Mandatory Seminars and Workshops:
Wolfgang Schirmacher: RESEARCH METHODS. (1 credit workshop for First Year students)
Introduction to basic research styles such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, dialectics, deconstruction in preparation for EGS dissertation projects.
Wolfgang Schirmacher: FOUNDATION IN MEDIA PHILOSOPHY. (1 credit workshop)
Introduces and explores the critical differences as well as productive blending of Communication Theory and Continental Philosophy which culminates in 'Media Philosophy'.
Elective Seminars and Workshops:
Wolfgang Schirmacher: RESEARCH FOR DISSERTATION. (1 credit workshop)
Discussing projects for Ph.D. dissertations in order to find connections to philosophical works and locate directions for theoretical research.
Media & Communication: June Second Year, First Group// June 1st – June 22nd, 2013.
Diane Davis: EMMANUEL LEVINAS: LANGUAGE AND ETHICS. (3 credits)
This course examines fundamental concepts developed at the intersections of language and ethics in the works of Emmanuel Levinas (e.g., face, illeity, substitution, trace, il y a), with a special focus on what he calls “the language relation,” and with a consideration of comparative approaches in Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, and Jacques Derrida.
Victor J. Vitanza: LYOTARD: HESITATING THOUGHT. (3 credits)
The works of Jean-Francois-Lyotard: Just Gaming (with Jean-Loup Thébaud), Libidinal Economy, and The Differend: Phrases in Dispute. We will also study Laura Kipnis's Marx: A Video (in relation to Libidinal Economy); sections from Werner Herzog's Where the Green Ants Dream (in relation to The Differend); and John Hancock's Bang the Drum Slowly (in relation to Just Gaming).
Avital Ronell: THE PATH OF JACQUES DERRIDA. (3 credits)
Discusses the fundamental innovations and philosophical upheavals for which Jacques Derrida is responsible, the implications of general writing (écriture) to the breakdown of the artwork, political disturbance, existential stalls, mourning disorder, traumatic fissuring and other excesses of thought in the works of Husserl, Freud, Heidegger, Lacan, Melanie Klein, Janklévitch, and Foucault.
Denise Riley: ON UTTERANCE. (3 credits)
In this course we will consider how language as utterance has been conceived in some European philosophical traditions, ranging from some nineteenth century concerns with language’s apparent capacities for ‘speaking itself’, to some twentieth century ideas of language’s articulation, or its inhibition.
Avital Ronell: FINITUDE IN PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE AND ART. (3 credits)
Explores the finitude of language and the singularity of the ethical event in a culture of absence, disappearance, and escape in relation to memory, fiction, and the human.
Wolfgang Schirmacher: MEDIA CULTURE & ARTIFICIAL LIFE. (3 credits)
Explores media culture as post-technological event (Ereignis), possibilities for the art of living authentically (Geviert), and ethical dasein beyond metaphysics (Gelassenheit).
Mandatory Seminars and Workshops:
Wolfgang Schirmacher: PH.D. TUTORIAL. (1 credit)
Discusses the outlines for possible Ph.D. thesis projects.
Elective Seminars and Workshops:
Wolfgang Schirmacher: RESEARCH FOR DISSERTATION. (1 credit workshop)
Discussing projects for Ph.D. dissertations in order to find connections to philosophical works and locate directions for theoretical research.
Media & Communication: June Second Year, Second Group // June 1st – June 22nd, 2013.
Paul D.Miller aka DJ Spooky: ART UNBOUND. (3 credits)
A thoughtful demonstration of the power of the mix in art, writing and music, in collaboration with an invited guest.
Tom Kalin: ART UNBOUND. (3 credits)
Explores the concept of film as a political and asthetic process, analyzes the relationship between positioning, narrative, and political narratives, and examines the beauty and power of film.
Wolfgang Schirmacher: MEDIA CULTURE & ARTIFICIAL LIFE. (3 credits)
Explores media culture as post-technological event (Ereignis), possibilities for the art of living authentically (Geviert), and ethical dasein beyond metaphysics (Gelassenheit).
Barbara Hammer: QUEER EXPERIMENTAL AND DOCUMENTARY FILM. (3 credits)
Using her own works (films, videos, book) as basis for exploring the emergence and growth of queer radical film, pioneer film artist Barbara Hammer juxtaposes and hypothesizes the continuing exciting possibilities of queer cinema.
Lev Manovich: SOFTWARE AND DIGITAL HUMANITIES. (3 credits)
Explores emerging work in software studies around the world and researches new ways of using software and cyberinfrastructure for cultural research.
Manuel De Landa: DELEUZE: SCIENCE & HISTORY. (3 credits)
Introduces Gilles Deleuze by using examples from economic, linguistic, military history as well as physics, mathematics, and biology. The virtuality-actuality of a realistic ontology and a materialistic ethics is explored.
Mandatory Seminars and Workshops:
Wolfgang Schirmacher: PH.D. TUTORIAL. (1 credit)
Discusses the outlines for possible Ph.D. thesis projects.
Elective Seminars and Workshops:
Wolfgang Schirmacher: RESEARCH FOR DISSERTATION. (1 credit workshop)
Discussing projects for Ph.D. dissertations in order to find connections to philosophical works and locate directions for theoretical research.
AUGUST SESSION // August 2nd - August 23rd, 2013.
Media & Communication: August First Year, First Group // August 2nd - August 23rd, 2013.
Martin Hielscher and Jeffrey Eugenides: LITERATURE AS COMMUNICATION. (3 credits)
Introduces Literature as model of communication and stimulates creative writing and philosophical thinking. Includes a workshop with a guest author such as Marcel Beyer, Durs Grünbein, Shelley Jackson, Michel Houellebecq, Julian Barnes, Nicholson Baker, Colum McCann, Nuruddin Farah, or Ilija Trojanow.
Judith Butler: ETHICS AND POLITICS AFTER THE SUBJECT. (3 credits)
Addresses theories of the subject and explores issues of gender politics, subversion of identity, power, ethical violence.
Anne Dufourmantelle: SEX AND PHILOSOPHY. (3 credits)
How to understand hospitality in our mad age - a Derridean reading of social practices by a pithy psychoanalyst.
Avital Ronell: FINITUDE IN PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE AND ART. (3 credits)
Explores the finitude of language and the singularity of the ethical event in a culture of absence, disappearance, and escape in relation to memory, fiction, and the human.
Siegfried Zielinski: AUDIOVISUAL HISTORY AND TECHNOCULTURE. (3 credits)
Surveys the history of mediations through which ideas and visual representation have become a material force. It enables an archeology of hearing and seeing by technical means.
Jason Barker: CINEMA OF ANTICAPITALISM. (3 credits)
Discusses cinematic representation and crisis capitalism through mutual relations of time, space, subjectivity and revolution, the social reproduction of images, and the spectacle of Guy Debord: the "common stream" of images detached from everyday life.
Mandatory Seminars and Workshops:
Wolfgang Schirmacher: RESEARCH METHODS. (1 credit workshop)
Introduction to basic research styles such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, dialectics, deconstruction in preparation for EGS dissertation projects.
Sigrid Hackenberg: FOUNDATION IN MEDIA PHILOSOPHY. (1 credit workshop)
Introduces and explores the critical differences as well as productive blending of Communication Theory and Continental Philosophy which culminates in 'Media Philosophy'.
Wolfgang Schirmacher: PH.D. TUTORIAL. (1 credit)
Discusses outlines for possible Ph.D. thesis projects.
Elective Seminars and Workshops:
Suzanne Doppelt: ADVANCED PHOTOGRAPHY. (1 credit workshop)
Photography as non-representational language will be demonstrated and explored. Students have the opportunity to discuss their own work with an renowned French photographer.
Mark Daniel Cohen: ACADEMIC WRITING. (1 credit workshop)
With focus on the development of productive thesis statements and the organization and composition of coherent argumentation in order to prepare students to begin their thesis and Ph.D. dissertations.
Media & Communication: August First Year, Second Group // August 2nd - August 23rd, 2013.
Catherine Malabou: PLASTICITY, SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. (3 credits)
Spiritedly advancing the concept of ‘plasticity’ as an contribution to the end of Metaphysics (Martin Heidegger). The “transformational masks” of Claude Lévi-Strauss are investigated as well as Hegel’s dialectics and the Derridean "differance".
Christopher Fynsk: HEIDEGGER: PHILOSOPHY AND ART. (3 credits)
Explores the future potential of Martin Heidegger, one of Europe's most influential 20th century philosophers and addresses divergent practices of thought and art in post-Heideggerian thinkers.
Giorgio Agamben: HOMO SACER. (3 credits)
A questioning of how radical subjectivity and the coming community can contribute to a paradigm of human existence.
Judith Balso with poet: POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY. (3 credits)
The complex relationship between poetry and philosophy and the notion of poetry as a thought will be explored in a cordial dialogue with an internationally recognized poet. Jacques Roubaud, Yang Lian, Jan Zwicky, Michel Deguy, Alessandro de Francesco, Philippe Beck, Nachoem Wijnberg have participated previously.
Pierre Alferi: ADVANCED EXPERIMENTAL FILM. (3 credits)
Theory and practice of experimental filmmaking will be explored – an exercise in cinematic poetry. Participants are encouraged to show and discuss their own work.
Boris Groys: THE GESAMTKUNSTWERK. (3 credits)
Discusses the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk as it was formulated by Richard Wagner and its further development in the artistic projects of Futurism, Dada and Russian Constructivism. There will be also discussed the theoretical interpretations of modern technique as a holistic artistic (anti)technique – in the writings by Ernst Juenger, Martin Heidegger and Marshall McLuhan.
Mandatory Seminars and Workshops:
Wolfgang Schirmacher: RESEARCH METHODS. (1 credit workshop)
Introduction to basic research styles such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, dialectics, deconstruction in preparation for EGS dissertation projects.
Sigrid Hackenberg: FOUNDATION IN MEDIA PHILOSOPHY. (1 credit workshop)
Introduces and explores the critical differences as well as productive blending of Communication Theory and Continental Philosophy which culminates in 'Media Philosophy'.
Wolfgang Schirmacher: PH.D. TUTORIAL. (1 credit)
Discusses outlines for possible Ph.D. thesis projects.
Elective Seminars and Workshops:
Suzanne Doppelt: ADVANCED PHOTOGRAPHY. (1 credit workshop)
Photography as non-representational language will be demonstrated and explored. Students have the opportunity to discuss their own work with an renowned French photographer.
Mark Daniel Cohen: ACADEMIC WRITING. (1 credit workshop)
With focus on the development of productive thesis statements and the organization and composition of coherent argumentation in order to prepare students to begin their thesis and Ph.D. dissertations.
Media & Communication: August Second Year, First Group // August 2nd - August 23rd, 2013.
Hendrik Speck: CODE, CONTROL AND RELIGION. (3 credits)
Investigates the clash between freedom and control in in the semi religious digital empires, evaluates the liberating impact of the Internet for media, art, and culture.
Hubertus von Amelunxen: PHILOSOPHY OF PHOTOGRAPHY & FILM. (3 credits)
Explores issues of meaning and representation, the interface of photography, video, and film, and the terror of the body in digital space (with emphasis on Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin and Vilem Flusser).
Alain Badiou: PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, ART. (3 credits)
In defense of systematic philosophy and in a critical dialogue with Gilles Deleuze basic issues such as the ethics of fidelity, truth, politics, and art are rediscovered, proclaiming a manifesto for philosophy.
Slavoj Žižek: MEDIA, POLITICS AND PSYCHOANALYSIS. (3 credits)
Links key psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts to social phenomena such as pop culture and political fantasies; a Lacanian reading with emphasis on the metastases of enjoyment and imagination.
Laurence Rickels with artist Caspar Stracke: HAUNTED THOUGHT AND ART. (3 credits)
A critical analysis of the accidental structure and underworld happening in literature, performance and video art. An invited artist demonstrates the transformative processes involved. Martha Rosler, Sue de Beer, Diana Thater, and Robert Bramkamp have participated previously.
Wolfgang Schirmacher: MEDIA AESTHETICS. (3 credits)
An active perception of the just and beautiful allows for a transformative experience of information technology as well as biotechnology.
Mandatory Seminars and Workshops:
Wolfgang Schirmacher: PH.D. TUTORIAL. (1 credit)
Discusses outlines for possible Ph.D. thesis projects.
Elective Seminars and Workshops:
Suzanne Doppelt: ADVANCED PHOTOGRAPHY. (1 credit workshop)
Photography as non-representational language will be demonstrated and explored. Students have the opportunity to discuss their own work with an renowned French photographer.
Mark Daniel Cohen: ACADEMIC WRITING. (1 credit workshop)
With focus on the development of productive thesis statements and the organization and composition of coherent argumentation in order to prepare students to begin their thesis and Ph.D. dissertations.
Media & Communication: August Second Year, Second Group // August 2nd - August 23rd, 2013.
Wolfgang Schirmacher: SCHOPENHAUER – LIVING DISASTER. (3 credits)
A timely reading of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and his radical turn from spirit to body which influenced Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Frankfurt School but also composers such as Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss as well as writers such as Samuel Beckett, André Gide and Jorge Luis Borges.
Bracha Ettinger: ART, PSYCHOANALYSIS, PHILOSOPHY: THE MATRIXIAL BORDERSPACE. (3 credits)
Aesthetic practice as rethinking ethics, in a feminist dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Francois-Lyotard, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari; enabling a dimension of emergence which underlies trauma, memory, representation and post-Lacanian subjectivity.
Jacques Rancière: SHOWING, TELLING, DOING. (3 credits)
Discussing the political question of the use and valua of images, the political significance and meaning of showing, and the extent to which showing can be equated with telling and with demonstrating.
Geoffrey Bennington: DECONSTRUCTION: THE POLITICS OF DERRIDA. (3 credits)
Through a close textual analysis in the spirit of deconstruction this course moves beyond the static page towards a political reading of the power of deconstruction.
Sigrid Hackenberg: LANGUAGE: RADICAL INSPIRATION. (3 credits)
Discusses the pulverization of language as the invocation of a radical inspiration; a language that not unlike Julia Kristeva’s ‘subject- in-process/on trial’ is in constant flux and plural in denomination; a language, philosophy and/or form of thinking that is in attendance and non-attendance.
Michael Schmidt and Peter Price: MUSIC PHILOSOPHY & SOUND. (3 credits)
Discusses the philosophy of music of Arthur Schopenhauer, Roland Barthes and Theodor W. Adorno and explores the clashes and resonances between multiple styles and cultural approaches to music—from classical composition to rap, hip-hop and avant-garde sound collage.
Mandatory Seminars and Workshops:
Wolfgang Schirmacher: PH.D. TUTORIAL. (1 credit)
Discusses outlines for possible Ph.D. thesis projects.
Elective Seminars and Workshops:
Suzanne Doppelt: ADVANCED PHOTOGRAPHY. (1 credit workshop)
Photography as non-representational language will be demonstrated and explored. Students have the opportunity to discuss their own work with an renowned French photographer.
Mark Daniel Cohen: ACADEMIC WRITING. (1 credit workshop)
With focus on the development of productive thesis statements and the organization and composition of coherent argumentation in order to prepare students to begin their thesis and Ph.D. dissertations.