Liberalism names a view of the human associated with European modernity--one centered on the individual's autonomy, agency, and desire and right to freedom--that has largely become naturalized as political, moral, and aesthetic common sense in the present. This broad worldview has also become an index for the critique of formations that it seems to authorize, such as free market capitalism, neoliberalism, and politically depleted notions of diversity and equality. This course explores these questions by focusing on sound, image, text, genre and form as possible places of encoding for liberal logics of being. We will read both classic and recent texts that take up liberalism, and also focus extensively on reading various media--video, film, albums, novels, advertisements--to ask what these materials teach about how to imagine the individual in relation to suffering, public life, privacy, feeling, power, and other themes that have been key in liberalism's articulations. In addition, we will experimentally propose and read (together) cultural objects that might offer a sense of where the present's liberalisms might be headed.
Number of Credits
3
Dan Wang