Professor Andrew Feenberg
HC 3598
This course will consider the possibility of alternative modernities from the standpoint of a critical constructivist approach to technology studies. We will challenge deterministic theories of modernization and convergence of all advanced societies by examining a variety of theoretical and cultural works. Constructivist technology studies shows the influence of values on design in the case of many particular devices. In this course we will attempt to go beyond case histories to consider the larger context in which modernities are understood and developed. This approach opens up the field of research very widely. The materials of the course are extremely diverse and will challenge the students to learn about everything from medical ethics to Japanese history, Critical Theory to French postmodernism.
The basic text is Feenberg, Alternative Modernity. This book is divided into four parts each of which consists in two essays, one on a philosopher and another on a social or cultural phenomenon. The course will accordingly be divided into four 3 week sessions, corresponding to the divisions of the book, as follows: 1) Marcuse and popular culture in the 1950s and 60s, 2) Critical Theory and human experimentation on AIDS patients, 3) Lyotard on postmodernism and the Minitel, and 4) Nishida on Japanese modernity and a Japanese novel on the game of go. Course requirements include a written question prepared for each class and a research paper.
Feenberg, Andrew, 1995. Alternative Modernity: The
Technical Turn in Philosophy and Social Theory.
Honneth, Axel (1991). The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical
Social Theory, K. Baynes, trans.
Lyotard, Jean François (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge, trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi.
Kawabata, Yasunari (1981). The Master of Go,
Caillois, Roger (2001). Man, Play, and Games,
Marcuse, Herbert (1969). An Essay on Liberation, Beacon Press.
Nishida, Kitaro (1993). Last Writings: Nothingness and the
Religious Worldview.
Berman,
A Course Reader will be
available. If the reader is not ready for the early assignments, texts will be
made available on my web page. In the assignment list below, items that do not
correspond to the book list will be found in the Course Reader.
Week by week assignments follow:
Part I: Dystopian Enlightenment
Week 1. Alternative Modernity (AM), chaps. 1,2,3
Week 2. Marcuse, An
Essay on Liberation, “The Individual in the Great Society”
Week 3. “The Franck Report” (start on
Honneth, The Critique of Power for next section)
Part II. Technique and Value
Week 4. AM, chaps.
4,5, “Democratic Rationalization,” Honneth, The
Critique of Power
Week 5. Honneth, The
Critique of Power, “Technology and Science as Ideology” (on web page)
Week 6. “The Nuremburg
Code,” “Judgement on Willowbrook,” “Democratic
Science?”, “How to Have Theory in an Epidemic,” "Philosophical Reflections on Experimenting
with Human Subjects."
Part III. Postmodern Technology
Week 7. AM, chaps.
6,7, Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
Week 8. Lyotard, The
Postmodern Condition
Week 9. “Touch Someone,” “The Dynamics
of System Development”
Part IV. AM,
chaps. 8,9,10
Week 10. “The Nishida Enigma,” “Visible
Discourses: Invisible Ideologies,” “Technology in a Global World,” “Nishida
Kitaro, The Problem of Japanese Culture,”
Week 11. Nishida, Last Writings, Kawabata, The Master of Go
Week 12. Caillois, Man, Play, and
Games