Seminar Series on Technology & Subjectivity NYC Spring 2011

of the CUNY Graduate Center presents its Spring ’11 Colloquium Series:
TECHNOLOGY AND SUBJECTIVITY

Technology is now the most ubiquitous signifier of global progress. In peace and war, economic development, education, health, the hard and social sciences and the arts, the technological fix has become the universal prescription. That technology pervades every aspect of social life is indisputable. If we have become partly or wholly identical with our instruments, has the traditional category of subjectivity any significance? Or are there new forms of subjectivity in which the physical, the biological and the instrumental are reconfigured without subjectivity being consigned to historical, metaphysical ideology? At issue is the force and shape of politics in this age of ubiquitous computing. What should be the aims of rethinking technology and politics? What might be an intervention into politics in these technologically inflected times?

Social Media and Politics Friday, February 25 at 4:00pm
Jack Bratich (Rutgers - Media Studies) and Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges - Political Science)
Student respondent: Andrew Mckinney (Sociology)

Labor, Technology and Value Friday, April 1 at 4:00pm
Jonathan Beller (Pratt - Humanities & Media Studies) and Patricia Clough (CUNY Graduate Center and Queens College - Sociology) Student respondent: Christina Nadler (Sociology)

History of Science and Design Technology Friday, April 29 at 4:00pm
Orit Halpern (New School for Social Research - History) and Astrid Schrader (Sarah Lawrence College - Science, Technology, and Society)
Student respondent: TBA

Thoughts on Technology and Subjectivity Thursday, May 7 at 6:30pm
Stanley Aronowitz (CUNY Graduate Center - Sociology)

This colloquium series will be held in the Sociology Lounge of the CUNY Graduate Center room 6112, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Contact: Tbuechele@gc.cuny.edu