What should the next video be?
Added 2019-05-12 21:03:32 +0000 UTCHere are the options:
(1) In 1990, Deleuze wrote an essay called “Postscript on the Societies of Control” which despite being short was very influential. It described a move away from what Foucault called disciplinary society to a new form of society, based not on discipline, but the control of the flows of information. Whereas disciplinary societies required people to be enclosed into defined spaces and schedules in order to control them (the factory, the school, the hospital, the barracks, etc.), control in this new society (that we presumably live in) no longer requires enclosing people according to time and space, it requires controlling the flow of information. I’d illustrate this with some contemporary examples as there are so many more of them today than there were when the essay was written.
2) This would be about the 1990 movie Total Recall, prosthetic memory, and the relations between memory, identity, and authenticity. I would draw mostly on an essay on the topic by Alison Landsberg, but might also use Derrida's ideas on teletechnology. I could also bring in Blade Runner, although I’m not sure if I’d focus on it as much as Total Recall. I’d talk about Total Recall as a postmodern take on memory and identity, as it problematizes the connection between them and authenticity.
3) I've already made a video on Baudrillard through American Psycho, but probably the most popular cultural product associated with Baudrillard is The Matrix, which was influenced by him, the actors had to read Baudrillard, his book Simulacra and Simulations was shown in the movie, and quotes of his were used in the script as well. However, Baudrillard quite harshly distanced himself from the movie. In this video I would introduce aspects of Baudrillard's thought relevant to The Matrix and show how their treatment in the movie differs.
Comments
These are all great, but still hope you get to "Enlightenment Now" one day - Bill Gates' favorite book of all time!! Also, if you are still interested in tackling bad scholarship, Shapiro just published another tired polemic with tons of bad history and philosophy calling for a return to Western Civ's golden age underpinned by "Judeo-Christian values".
2019-05-13 00:26:25 +0000 UTCI really hope we get all of these videos developed one day!
unspun
2019-05-12 23:59:31 +0000 UTC