COML 6341 - [Aesthetics of Excess: Psycho-Philosophical Approaches to Cinematic Technologies]

(crosslisted)
(also ENGL 6341, FREN 6341, PMA 6441, VISST 6341)

Fall. 4 credits.

Next offered 2014-2015. Enrollment limited to: 15 students.

T. Murray.

The rise of cinema and mechanized representational technologies has provided an informative backdrop for a century long reflection on aesthetics and the excesses of affect, sentiment, and corporeality in relation to modern/postmodern formulations of subjectivity, community, politics, race, and sexuality. Emphasizing French Psycho-Philosophical approaches to cinematic technologies, the course will rehearse the intellectual backdrop for understanding this Aesthetics of Excess with readings in Freud, Bergson, Artaud, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty in order to frame discussion of later twentieth and twenty-first century reflections on the balance between aesthetics and cinematic and new media technologies. In dialogue with a range of films and digital artworks, we will analyze texts to be chosen from Fanon, Barthes, Simondon,Lyotard, Deleuze, Derrrida, Kristeva, Laplanche, Stiegler, Duguet, Bellour, Nancy, and Rancière.