Revolution, Change, Difference

Revolution, Change, Difference Marxism,
Accelerationism, Realism/Materialism, Khun, Fish,
Brassier, Negarastani, Brandom.

A revolution is a violent rupture that asks us to
redefine, revise and re-think what we perceive to
be the natural conditions of life and our future.
In contemporary culture, the hope that art has
the power to instrumentalize social change is
often cast as the product of an old romance, or
forms of weak nostalgic aspirations from a
left-over avant-garde. But, what is the structure
of a revolution? How do things change? What is
the relationship between how we understand the
conditions we live in and how we might change
them - for the better? If change 'just happens
naturally' (in that each week, day, minute or
second is not the same and has a 'revolutionary
aspect') then why do we task art with the project
of making change happen?

What is at stake for art as a revolutionary
agent, when this form of agency is often cast as
folklore, mythology and fantasy?

These questions ask us explore the concepts of
mastery, reason, knowledge, and power; as well as
the deeper relations between language and the way
we comprehend the structure of reality itself.

This course involves a set of reading seminars
where we will examine critical and philosophical
texts very closely. These will include the work
of Marxist and post-Marxist thinkers as well as
investigations into the analytical tradition.