| Required Books:
· Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues
with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida
· W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction (translation
of Literatur und Luftkrieg)
· Paul Virilio, War and Cinema
· Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place
· Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies: Vol. 2, Male Bodies, Psychoanalyzing
the White Terror
· Course-reader
Course Requirements:
All students are required to actively participate in the seminar, give
one 20-25 minute class presentation, and write a substantial research
paper. Suggested topics for presentations are given in the syllabus.
Presentation Requirements:
1. Presentations should be given from notes and last about 20-25 minutes,
illustrated with appropriate images and examples.
2. Your presentation should focus on some aspect of how the history of
representation and media bears upon war. The concern here is not merely
the representation of war in a given work or the fact that war was an
"influence" on certain authors or movements; rather, I am much
more interested in hearing you talk about the relationships between the
materiality of media and the conditions of possibility for the perception,
presentation, representation, and dissemination of war.
3. The presentation must be accompanied by a hand-out for the class which
includes both an outline of what you are going to say and an annotated
bibliography with at least 8-10 sources (both primary and secondary).
4. Presenters are asked to assign about 15-20 pages of supplemental readings.
You must copy these readings for the class the week before your presentation.
If you come during my office hours, you may use the copier in the Germanic
Languages department.
5. I am available (during office hours and by email) to discuss the topics
of your presentation. Topics given in the syllabus are suggestions and
can be tailored to reflect your interests.
SYLLABUS
WEEK 1: Event-Representation-Dissemination
Jan. 14 - Introduction to Media Theory
· 9/11 and theories of convergence
· Narrativity and War: Lord of the Rings; Albrecht Altdorfer's
"Battle of Issus" (1529)
· On the conceptual history of Geschichte and Historie
WEEK 2: Temporalities and Historical Representation
Jan. 21 - 9/11 and the War on Terrorism
· Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues
with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida
· Reinhart Koselleck, "Modernity and the Planes of Historicity,"
"Historia Magistra Vitae: The Dissolution of the Topos and the Perspective
of a Modernized Historical Process" from: Futures Past: On the
Semantics of Historical Time. Trans. Keith Tribe. (course-reader)
· Slavoj Zizek, selections from: Welcome to the Desert of the
Real (course-reader)
· Don DeLillo, "In the Ruins of the Future" (course-reader)
Presentation: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (esp. ch. 1-2).
Recommended edition edited and translated by Steven Lattimore; or Sun-Tzu,
The Art of Warfare; or Biblical accounts of war (such as the story
of Jericho)
Week 3: Tele-Epistemology and War at the Speed of Light
Jan. 28 - The Gulf War and Interrogation of the Real
· Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place
· Descartes, "Telescopes" (course-reader)
· Hubert Dreyfus, "Telepistemology: Descartes's Last Stand"
and Thomas J. Campanella, "Eden by Wire: Webcameras and the Telepresent
Landscape" from: The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology
in the Age of the Internet. Ed. Ken Goldberg (course-reader)
· Paul Virilio, selections from Unknown Quantity (course-reader)
· Karl von Clausewitz, selections from On War (course-reader)
Presentation: Paul Virilio, Desert Screen: War at the Speed of Light;
discussion of the War in Iraq and the Internet; with reference to and
contrast with Karl von Clausewitz, On War
Week 4: The Modernist Event / Modernist Representation
Feb. 4 - Luftkrieg, the Holocaust, and the Limits of Representation?
· W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction
· Hayden White, "Historical Emplotment and the Problem of
Truth in Historical Representation" and "The Modernist Event"
from Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect (course-reader)
Presentation: Martin Heidegger and modern technology (essays such as:
"The Question Concerning Technology" and "The Age of the
World Picture"); or Sebald, Austerlitz.
Week 5: War and Cinema
Feb. 11 - Convergent Technologies of Perception and Aurality
· Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception
· Friedrich Kittler, selection on "film" from Gramophone,
Film, Typewriter (course-reader)
· Anton Kaes, essay TBA
· M. M. Gehrke and Rudolf Arnheim, "The End of the Private
Sphere" and Bertolt Brecht, "The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication"
from: The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, ed. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay,
and Edward Dimendberg (course-reader)
· Marshall McLuhan, "Telegraph: The Social Hormone" (course-reader)
Presentation: WWI, Futurism, or Weimar film. Possible films might be:
Richard Oswald's 1914: Die letzten Tage vor dem Weltbrand (1931); or Futurist
Representations/Politics of War (deification of speed and destruction).
Possible artists: Marinetti, Severini, and Carrà; possible secondary
sources: Jeffrey Schnapp, "Crash: Speed as the Engine of Individuality,"
Modernism/ Modernity. 6.1. January 1999. 1-49; Marjorie Perloff,
The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of
Rupture. Chicago: U. of Chicago, 1986
Week 6: Seeing the Masses, Mass Destruction, and Mass Death
Feb. 18 - Nazism and Hiroshima
· Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will (film should be
viewed before class)
· Ulrich Baer, Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma
(selections in course-reader)
· Ota Yoko, City of Corpses (course-reader)
Presentation: Photography and Trauma, incl. Susan Sontag, Regarding
the Pain of Others; perhaps with reference to Picasso's Guernica or
other iconic pieces of war imagery such as Goya's The Disasters of War
or sketches by Käthe Kollwitz; or an analysis of the dissemination
of the photograph of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or literary
renditions. Overview of the latter: John Whittier Treat, Writing Ground
Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb; or film about the nuclear
war, such as Hiroshima, Mon Amour, or Dr. Strangelove, or How
I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Week 7: Photography and War
Feb. 25 - World War I, the American Civil War, and the Camera
· Ernst Jünger, selected essays including: "War and
Photography," "On Danger," "On Pain" (course-reader);
Germanists should read the entire essay, "Über den Schmerz,"
in Jünger's Sämtliche Werke, vol. 7.
· Ernst Friedrich, Krieg dem Kriege (War Against War)
· Paul K. Saint-Amour, "Modernist Reconnaissance," Modernism/Modernity.
Vol. 10.2, April 2003 (course-reader)
· Bernd Hüppauf, "Experiences of Modern Warfare and the
Crisis of Representation," New German Critique. No. 59, Spring/Summer
1993 (course-reader)
· Alexander Gardner, Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook (selections
in course-reader)
· Alan Trachtenberg, "Albums of War: On Reading Civil War
Photographs," Representations. Vol. 9, Winter 1985 (course-reader)
Presentation: Any aspect of photography and the history of war (possible
works of literature with interplay between photography and narrative:
Sebald's Austerlitz or The Emigrants; works by Alexander
Kluge); or an analysis of expressionist and Post-Expressionist landscapes
and language. Possible artists and authors: Kirchner, Marc, Macke, Meidner,
Beckman, etc. Poets such as Trakl, van Hoddis, Heym, and Rilke. Collection:
German Expressionist: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire
to the Rise of National Socialism. Ed. Rose-Carol Washton Long. Berkeley:
U. of California Press, 1993.
Week 8: The Destruction of the Body
March 3 - Armor and Absence
· Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies: Volume 2, Male Bodies, Psychoanalyzing
the White Terror
· Ernst Jünger, Der Krieg als inneres Erlebnis (selections
in course-reader)
· Ernst Jünger, "Vorwort" to Luftfahrt ist Not (course-reader)
· Todd Presner, "The End of Sex and the Last Man: On the Weimar
Utopia of Ernst Jünger's 'Worker,'" Qui Parle, special
issue on "Fascism, Gender, and Culture." Vol. 13.1. Fall/Winter
2001. (course-reader)
· Brigid Doherty, "See: We are all Neurasthenics! Or, The
Trauma of the Dada Montage," Critical Inquiry. Autumn 1997,
vol. 24.1 (course-reader)
Presentation: Ernst Jünger and the armored body (works such as Storms
of Steel, Der Krieg als inneres Erlebnis; Jünger's photo-books);
secondary sources by Andreas Huyssen, Russell Berman, Karl Heinz Böhrer).
Or, a presentation on the visual arts and the destruction of the body,
for example, in Berlin Dada.
Week 9: Modes of Historical / Memorial Emplotment
March 10 - Material History and Memory
· Leo Tolstoy, "Austerlitz," "Clausewitz,"
and "Second Epilogue" from War and Peace (course-reader)
· Reinhart Koselleck, "War Memorials: Identity Formations
of the Survivors," The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing
History, Spacing Concepts. Trans. Todd Presner (course-reader)
· Walter Benjamin, "The Storyteller" (course-reader)
Presentation on some aspect of the material history of war memorials.
Possible sources include: Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning;
James Young; debates on Holocaust memorials or other memorials such as
the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. Or, a presentation on Tolstoy's War
and Peace and the Napoleonic Wars.
Week 10: Conclusions
March 17 - Last day of class (no assignments)
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