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SoSe 24: Political Depression and the Aesthetics of Sovereignty II

Rizvana Bradley

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Only MA students can register for this course !

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Last winter term, Political Depression and the Aesthetics of Sovereignty (I) began from the following questions: How might we begin to approach the affective contours of what Lauren Berlant theorized as the “impassivity” of the historical present, in ways that do not immediately circumscribe the terms of inquiry by demanding they lead to resolution, reparation, or redress? What forms of attunement, accompaniment, and experimentation might be occasioned by inhabiting what the Feel Tank Chicago termed “political depression” as an open question, rather than through predetermined diagnostics? Political Depression and the Aesthetics of Sovereignty II differentially extends these questions by attending to cinematic exemplars of the catastrophic imagination associated with the socio-ecological crises of late capitalism and the so-called Anthropocene. ----- This course takes up such lines of inquiry through explorations of affect theory, its interlocutors, and its critics, with a particular emphasis on what Sianne Ngai terms “minor feelings” and “negative affects,” in their racial and gendered dimensionality. We will pay special attention to films that obliquely take up this constellation of affective themes, investigating how they aesthetically refract, rather than simply reflect, the myriad impasses (economic, ecological, scientific, political, racial, gendered, etc.) of the present and the project of recuperating sovereignty in the midst of global crisis. Completion of Political Depression and the Aesthetics of Sovereignty (I) is not a prerequisite for enrollment. ----- Please register at: culture@jfki.fu-berlin.de with your name, matriculation number, study program, home university (if applicable), zedat email address or email address of home university, and type of exchange program (if applicable). Deadline for registration is April 8, 2024. Please register on Campus Management as well and as soon as possible. close