Art, Narrativity, Politics and Aesthetics 1

Subject guarantor:

Radovan HALUZÍK

Name of lecturer(s):

Radovan HALUZÍK

Learning outcomes of the course unit:

The aim of the course is - using examples from the fields of cultural history, anthropology, sociology, aesthetics and urbanism - to show cinema, literature and art as an active instruments of shaping of power, its construction, legitimization, ridiculing, escape to imaginary worlds as well as (passive) resistance. Course will be based on movie passages, literature extracts, pictures as well as on short excursions.

Mode of study:

Prerequisites and co-requisites:

No

Recommended optional programme components:

No

Course contents:

Why is art so powerful? How it can change the life of so many people? How we construct the new (imaginary) worlds and deconstruct the old ones? The course is focused on the relation of narrative and visual arts to society. The special attention will be paid to the mutual relation of aesthetics and politics.

Recommended or required reading:

Will be announced soon.

Planned learning activities and teaching methods:

No

Assessment methods and criteria:

attendence 50%

final test 35%

participation in the class 15%

Course web page:

Note:

-Myth, grand narratives in the life of modern society and its reflection in arts and literature. The myth of the golden age (Elliade), Christian salvation in the politics and economics of the West (Weber), myths of the better future (Marx, Halfin), the myth of free market competition (from the liberals to Darwin, and then to the neo-liberals of today), etc.

- the 20th century and its totalitarian regimes of masses:

The communist regime as an aesthetic project, communism as modernity and communism as neo-traditionalism. (Brandist, Buchli, Kotkin, Martin atd.)

Fascism and nazism and the aesthetisation of politics (Benjamin, Griffin, Reichel).

The aesthetics of the masses in the movies of Leni Reifenstahl, Eisensstein, etc.

-Nationalism and its ?seductive? aesthetics. The nation as a subject of secular religion. War as a project of political aesthetics (Benjamin, Reichel). The examples of Nazi Germany and recent wars in the former Yugoslavia and in the post-Soviet Caucasus.

- The Museum as a performance of national aesthetics. Die Folk and the celebration of the peasant roots of the nation. (Excursion to the National Museum.)

-Romanticism, the romantic subject and their influence on western thought.

-Politics and aesthetics:

W.Benjamin versus J. Ranciére. Is aesthetics shaped more by politics or politics by aesthetics?(=What cam first ? the chicken or the egg?) Where (and when) are new political visions born and old ones deconstructed? And what is the role of the artistic avangards? And what about political satire and the spoof? And what does it mean for us ? artists?

- Aestheticd as a tool of power and colonial expansion. Orientalism, savage otherness and the discourses of colonial dominance (postcolonialism, Said, Bhabha, Spivak, etc.) Orientalism in literature, art and its later reflections in cinema.

-Ritual, mass ritual, performance, theatre:

The ambiguous historical journey from ritual to carnival, from carnival to political protest (Bachtin, Turner, Schechner).

Can ritual/performance/theatre shape/construct social reality? (Artaud, Czordas, Myerhoff, Schieffelin atd.)

-To live like them! Can novels and TV soup-operas influence our lives and the world around us? (Ang, Abu-Lughod, etc.)

-The anthropology of luxury. A short history of the democratization of luxury. Excursion to the Renaissance, the 19th century and Prague today.

-Art and landscape. Thecity as a work of art. Landscape as a wilderness, landscape as idyllic countryside, landscape as an ?industrial hell?.

-Modernity as an aesthetic and politics of body and space. How idid nterwar modernity shape the human body, society, urbanism and architecture? (Guided tour of 1930s Prague.)

-Postmodernism as the crisis of grand narratives (Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Feyerabend) and its expressions in art, literature and cinema. Postmodern political aesthetics from environmentalism, life-style alternatives, multiculturalism, New Age, to various „returns to roots“.

-Art as subversion, art as protest, resistance and rebellion. Did rock?n?roll disrupt the communist regime more than dissent? (A. Yurchak) Are subcultures and alternatives more escapes to private worlds or constructions of new ones?

-(Contemporary) art and its potential for (philosophical) deconstruction and subversion.

Schedule for winter semester 2013/2014:

	06:00–08:0008:00–10:0010:00–12:0012:00–14:0014:00–16:0016:00–18:0018:00–20:0020:00–22:0022:00–24:00
Mon
Tue
Fri
Thu
Fri

Date	Day	Time	Tutor	Location	Notes	No. of paralel
		11:30–13:05	HALUZÍK R.	Učebna 3 Lažanský palác	Room no. 3	přednášková par. 1

Schedule for summer semester 2013/2014:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

The subject is a part of the following study plans:

• Cinema and Digital Media - Screenwriting (qualification subject)
• Cinema and Digital Media - Directing (qualification subject)