What is it that you do not know?
What do you want to imagine?
How do you create possibility?
What would you do with a million dollars?
What is the question nobody is asking?
READING LIST
We will read selections from many of the following books: you will find
them all on Blackboard under “Content” as PDF’s unless otherwise
indicated. Some will appear in the class readings, some will be
recommended:
Bag, Alice. Violence Girl: East LA Rage to Hollywood Stage, A Chicana
Punk Story. Feral House, 2011.
Bamyeh, Mohammed A. Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic
Humanity. Rowman and Littlefield, 2010.
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke UP,
2010.
Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Duke UP, 2011.
Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope, Volume 1. MIT Press, 1995.
Boggs, Grace Lee. The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for
the Twenty-First Century. UC Press, 2012.
Camus, Albert. “Creation and Revolution” (1951) from The Rebel: An Essay
on Man in Revolt. Vintage: 1992.
Combahee River Collective. Collective Statement, 1978. Online:
http://circuitous.org/scraps/combahee.html
DeBord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Black and Red, 2010.
Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum, 2000.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. A Postcapitalist Politics. University of Minnesota
Press, 2006.
Giroux, Henry. On Critical Pedagogy. Continuum, 2011
Graeber, David. Fragments of An Anarchist Anthropology. Prickly
Paradigm Press, 2004.
Graeber, David. Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion and Desire.
AK Press, 2007.
Gueron, Daniel and Paul Sharkey. Editor. No Gods, No Masters: An
Anthology of Anarchism. AK Press, 2005.
Halberstam, J. The Queer Art of Failure. Duke UP, 2011.
Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and
Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century” in Socialist Review No.
80 (1985): 65-108. Online:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jwstone2/WAM/Haraway.pdf
Hawken, Paul. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History
is Restoring Grace, Justice and Beauty to the World. Penguin, 2008.
hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.
Routledge, 1994.
Hurewitz, Daniel. Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern
Politics. UC Press, 2008.
Kun, Josh. Audiotopia: Music, Race and America (UC Press, 2005)
Linebaugh, Peter and Marcus Rediker. Many Headed Hydra (Beacon Press,
2001)
Magon, Ricardo Flores. Dreams of Freedom: A Ricardo Flores Magon
Reader (AK Press, 2005)
Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century
(Harvard UP, 2009)
McNeill, Legs. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
(Grove, 2006)
Lock, Graham. Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in
the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton (Duke UP,
1999)
Manifesto: Three Classic Essays on How to Change the World by Che
Guevara, Marx and Engels, Rosa Luxembourg (Ocean Press, 2005)
Moten, Fred and Stefani Harney. “The University and The Undercommons:
Seven Theses” Social Text 79, Volume 22, No. 2 (Summer 2004):
101-115.
Muñoz, José E. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Utopia
(NYU Press, 2009)
Parson, Lucy. Freedom, Equality, Solidarity (Charles H. Kerr, 2004)
Ranciere, Jacques. The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual
Emancipation (Stanford UP, 1991)
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the
Human Condition Have Failed (Yale UP, 1999)
Scott, James C. The Art of Not Being Governed (Yale UP, 2010)
Sennet, Richard. Together – The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of
Cooperation (Yale UP, 2012)
Solanas, Valerie. SCUM Manifesto (Verso, 2004)
Streeby, Shelley. Radical Sensations: World Movements, Violence, and
Visual Culture (Duke University Press, forthcoming, 2013)
Thomson, Nato. Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011
(MIT Press, 2012).
Tzara, Tristan, Dada Manifesto (1918)
Virno, Paolo. A Grammar of the Multitude (Semiotexte, 2004)
Recommended Films
Wizard of Oz (1939) dir. Victor Fleming
Passing Strange: The Movie (2009) dir. Spike Lee
Chicken Run (2000) dir. Peter Lord and Nick Park
The Prime of Miss Jean Brody (1969) dir. Ronald Neame
The Class (2008) dir. Laurent Cantet
The Garden (2008) dir. Scott Hamilton Kennedy
They Live (1998) dir. John Carpenter
Food Inc (2008) dir. Robert Kenner
Requirements
1) Write a manifesto, of any length and form, for the second week of
class.
2) Collaborate in working groups throughout the semester – you
may choose to carry this collaborative project forward or it may
be ephemeral. You will have a chance on October 2 to meet as
groups to really cement the stakes of your collaborative efforts.
3) Present your work on any of the class projects publically and off
campus.
4) Each week post a short reaction to the week’s readings and come
to class having read the posts of your classmates – a posterous site
will be set up soon to do so.
5) Each week a group of students will be responsible for the
readings.
6) Think long and hard about how to live otherwise in the world.
7) Commit to creating new languages of change, power, relation and
temporality.
8) Listen/Converse/Stay open the unknown, the unexpected and the
unpredictable.
9) Read/Share.
10)Take a risk.
Syllabus - Schedule
Week One:
August 28
COMMITMENTS & GOALS
Why be an academic?
Moten and Hearny – “The University and the
Undercommons”
Week Two:
September 4
MANIFEST THIS!
The Performative Work of the Manifesto
Assignment:
Come to class with a paragraph, a phrase, a page or
transcript of a manifesto you have composed.
Guest:
Dancer & choreographer Miss Prissy
Reading:
Donna Haraway, from “The Cyborg Manifesto”:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jwstone2/WAM/Haraway.pdf
Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto:
http://provokateur.com/wpcontent/uploads/2012/01/SCUM-Manifesto-by-ValerieSolanas.pdf
Combahee River Collective Statement:
http://circuitous.org/scraps/combahee.html;
“El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán” 1969:
http://clubs.asua.arizona.edu/~mecha/pages/PDFs/ElPlan
DeAtzlan.pdf
Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto (1918):
http://clubs.asua.arizona.edu/~mecha/pages/PDFs/ElPlan
DeAtzlan.pdf
EZLN, “First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle”
1994:
http://cybernations.wikia.com/wiki/First_Declaration_fro
m_the_Lacandon_Jungle
Black Panther Party Program and Platform (1966):
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resou
rces/Primary/Manifestos/Panther_platform.html
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1888):
http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/marx/works/download
/manifest.pdf
Event:
9/5, The Underground: From the Streets to the Stage,
USC
Week Three:
September 11
NO GODS, NO MASTERS
Anarchy, Part 1
Guest:
UCSD Professor Shelley Streeby
Reading:
From Radical Sensations by Streeby; Lucy Parsons, from
Freedom, Equality and Solidarity; from Guy DeBord,
The Society of the Spectacle; Albert Camus, “Creation
and Revolution”; selections from No Gods, No Masters
Event:
Talk by Shelley Streeby, “Radical Sensations” on
Monday September 10, in the afternoon in ASE
Commons.
Week Four:
September 18
CIVILIZATION AND THE UNRULY
The Question of Governance
Reading:
David Graeber, from Fragments of An Anarchist
Anthropology; James Scott, from The Art of Being
Ungoverned; Linebaugh and Rediker, from Many
Headed Hydra; Paolo Virno, from Toward a Grammar of
the Multitudes.
Film:
Chicken Run (2000)
Week Five:
September 25
DREAMS OF FREEDOM
Anarchy, pt. 2
Guest:
LMU Professor Rubén Martinez
Reading:
Ricardo Flores Magón, essays & letters from Dreams of
Freedom; from Occupy! Scenes From Occupied
America; Rubén Martinez, “Occupy’s Deep L.A. Roots;”
Daniel Hurewitz, “Together Against the World” from
Bohemian Los Angeles
Event:
9/28, The Ballad of Ricardo Flores Magón, Ford
Amphitheatre
Week Six:
October 2
WHAT IS A CLASSROM WITHOUT TEACHERS?
Assignment:
Collaborative group meetings in the absence of
Halberstam and Kun; Record, document, and share your
conversations online; Reflect on both projects and on
non-hierarchical pedagogy and take topics from the
readings/films on pedagogy for next week.
Films:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
The Class (2008)
Week Seven:
October 9
IGNORANCE IS BLISS
Intellectual Emancipation
Event:
Class may meet at the Public University; others many
attend
Reading:
Jacques Ranciere, from The Ignorant Schoolmaster;
Henry Giroux, from On Critical Pedagogy; Paolo Friere
from Pedagogy of the Oppressed; bell hooks, from
Teaching to Transgress; J. Halberstam, “Introduction” to
The Queer Art of Failure.
Week Eight:
October 16
AUDIOTOPIAS
Music and Other Spaces
Reading:
Graham Lock, from Blutopia; Josh Kun, from
Audiotopia; Greil Marcus, from Lipstick Traces; Michel
Foucault, “Of Other Spaces;”
Film:
Passing Strange: The Movie (2009)
Week Nine:
October 23
CRUISING PUNK UTOPIAS
The over there and the not yet
Reading:
José Muñoz, from Cruising Utopia; Legs McNeil, from
Please Kill Me; Alice Bag, from Violence Girl; Ernst
Bloch, from The Principle of Hope
Week Ten:
October 30
ART ACTIONS
Participation and intervention in contemporary art
Event:
Class will meet at LA><ART: 2640 S. La Cienega Los
Angeles, CA 90034
Guest:
Lauri Firstenberg, LA><ART director & chief curator
Reading:
Nato Thompson, from Living as Form and The
Interventionists; Nicholas Bourriaud, from Relational
Aesthetics; Claire Bishop, from Artificial Hells;
exhibition, Utopia Station; performances, The Port
Huron Project
Week Eleven:
November 6
GLOBAL SPRINGS
Contemporary Movements in Mexico & the Arab World
Reading:
Mohammed A. Bamyeh, from Anarchy as Order; John
Gilbert, from Mexico Unconquered; Paula Amar; Other
readings TBA
Week Twelve:
November 13
OCCUPY ENVIRONMENT
Eating Otherwise
Event:
Class will meet at Homegirl Café
Guest:
Members of the Homegirl Café Urban Garden Project
Reading:
Paul Hawken, from Blessed Unrest; Jane Bennett, from
Vibrant Matter
Films:
The Garden (2008); Food Inc (2008)
Week Thirteen: THE ARTS OF TAKING A BREAK
November 20
Reflect, plan, work, & think; miss class
Week Fourteen: WHAT NOW?
November 27
The Next Revolutions
Reading:
Grace Lee Boggs, from The Next American Revolution;
J.K. Gibson-Graham, from Postcapitalist Politics; David
Graeber, from Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy,
Rebellion and Desire; Lauren Berlant from Cruel
Optimism; Richard Sennett, from Together.
Week Fifteen:
December 4
SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW
Final Projects: Hopes, Fears, Outcomes
Assignment:
Bring something to class to share with the group that you
think represents a fitting outcome to what you have done
as a collaborative group in the class – a performance, a
reading, a presentation, an event, a phrase, a poem, a
manifesto, a theoretical model, a plaster-cast, a circuit
board, a circus act, an act of random madness, a leap of
faith, a conversion story, a conversation, someone you
have met, show and tell, show and know, youtube it,
tweet it, be it.
Film:
The Wizard of Oz (1939)