ANTH 360 - Problems in Cultural Analysis

1 unit(s)

Covers a variety of current issues in modern anthropology in terms of ongoing discussion among scholars of diverse opinions rather than a rigid body of fact and theory.

May be repeated for credit if topic has changed. Kaushik Ghosh

Topic for 19/20b: Postcolonialism, Posthumanism, Nature. Mushrooms and canine companions, thinking forests and technobodies, earth beings and affective states. Such is the cast of characters who populate the stage of Posthumanism, the contemporary body of critical scholarship that aims at a fierce contestation of Humanism, perhaps the most central organizing ideology of the Enlightenment. Coming from Science and Technology Studies, Feminism and Queer Theory and Ecocriticism, Posthumanism relentlessly invites one to think towards a future beyond the category of the Human (and the Non-Human). The questioning of Humanism, however, has an important genealogy in an earlier body of critical scholarship, namely Postcolonialism. How do these two critiques of humanism compare? Given the contemporary relevance of the question of global warming and mass extinctions, Nature emerges as a very important terrain for these two bodies of scholarship to engage each other. In this seminar, the students read a range of representative works of these two “Posthumanisms,” including those by Frantz Fanon, Donna Haraway, Gayatri Spivak, Bruno Latour and Lauren Berlant.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS