Pedestrian Theory: Mapping Inoperativity – Walking, Working, Waking

Honig, Khalip
MCM/English/Poli Sci
Tuesdays, 1:20-3:50; 165 George St., Rm. 106 (MCM seminar room)

Evaluation:
50 % paper: max. 15 pages, on a topic to be approved by instructor, due
25 % presentation 10 minutes (MAX. 15) close reading of a text + 3 questions
25 % participation come prepared, be an active, engaged seminar member

Books to buy
The Sabbath, A.J. Heschel
Undoing the Demos, Wendy Brown
Mohawk Interruptus, Audra Simpson
Two Cheers for Anarchism, James Scott
Nudities, Giorgio Agamben, plus any other you would rather have in book form

Schedule

February
2 Introduction. Sovereignty and Strike, Land and Text: Representation and Legibility

Melville, Moby-Dick (chapter one) READ for and/or in Class (Ishmael versus Bartleby)

“Holding Their Ground” (film; screened in class (15-30 mins)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/18/canada-indigenous-first-nations-tar-
sands-pipeline-oil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiVxyLb1hJA
https://www.facebook.com/unistoten/?fref=ts

Glenn Ligon, “I Am A Man”

** Feb 8th-9th ASTRA TAYLOR (founded of Rolling Jubilee project and Strike
Debt) is at COGUT
Monday, 5:30 pm TALK: “Activism and Media: Organizing After Occupy”
Tuesday 4 pm MOVIE – The Examined Life, + Q and A

9 Bartleby’s Occupation
Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.”
Deleuze, “Bartelby; or, the Formula”
Ranciere, “Deleuze, Bartleby, and the Literary Formula”

Highly Recommended:
Lee Edelman, “Occupy Wall Street: ‘Bartleby’ Against the Humanities”
Barbara Foley, “From Wall Street to Astor Place: Historicizing Melville’s ‘Bartleby’”
Michael Rogin, Subversive Genealogy, pp. 192-201.
Recommended:
Jonathan Edwards, Freedom Of The Will
Joseph Priestley, Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity
Branka Arsic, Passive Constitutions: Or 71/2 Times Bartleby

16 Reading Bartleby
Agamben, “Bartleby, or On Contingency” Potentialities and “The Assistants” chapter 4,
Profanations
James Martel, “The Misinterpellated Messiah”
C.L.R. James. “The Revolution and the Negro,” New International, Volume V,
December 1939, pp. 339-343. Published under the name J.R Johnson;
Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. At https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-
clr/works/1939/12/negro-revolution.htm

Guest: James Martel

Recommended:
Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby & Co.
Agamben, “Bartleby” in The Coming Community

23 Long weekend; no class

March
1 Ontology and Politics I (Inoperativity) (TBD)
Agamben, “The Work of Man” in Giorgio Agamben: Sovereignty and Life, ed Calarco
and DeCaroli (1-10).
Agamben, "The Hunger of an Ox" in Nudities
Agamben, “What is a Destituent Power? Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space February 2014 32: 65-74, at http://epd.sagepub.com/content/32/1/65.full.pdf+html
Agamben, “Judgment Day” Profanations
Agamben, “Forms of Life” Means Without Ends

A.J. Heschel, The Sabbath, pp 13-24, 27-41, 73-101

Recommended:
Jessica Whyte, Catastrophe and Redemption

March 3 screening – Pasolini Teorema (SCREENING)

8 Ontology and Politics II (Irreparability)

Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Inoperative Community” (first chapter of The Inoperative
Community)
Agamben, “Taking Place” and “Irreparable,” from The Coming Community
Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Repudiation of the Trilogy of Life” and Teorema
Guest: Ramsay McGlazer

Recommended:
Maurice Blanchot “Mallarmé’s Experience,” The Space of Literature or The Writing of
the Disaster.
Leo Bersani, “Is The Rectum a Grave?” and “Against Monogamy.”

15 Use
Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism, “Against” (“not through me”) (selections TBA)
Wendy Brown, Undoing The Demos (chapter One and chapter Four (60 pp total)
Agamben, “On What We Cannot Do” in Nudities
Jonathan Poore “Bartleby’s Occupation: ‘Passive Resistance’ Then and Now”
http://nonsite.org/article/bartlebys-occupation-passive-resistance-then-and-now

recommended
-Fred Moten and Stefan Harvey, Undercommons

17 screening Acts of Defiance

Alec MacLeod, 1992, 104 min 34 s (culture lab TBD)

22 Interruption
Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus
Acts of Defiance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcjQA5S74PI
Culture lab TBD

Recommended:
Duncan Ivison, Paul Patton and Will Sanders (eds.). Political Theory and the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 113-136.
Glenn Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks
Kevin Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty

29 Spring Recess

April 5 no class

7 Screening Charles Burnett, Killer of Sheep

12 Anarchy
James Scott, Two Cheers For Anarchism (buy the book)
Kevin Quashie, “The Trouble with Publicness: Toward a Theory of Black Quiet”
Charles Burnett, Killer of Sheep (SCREENING)

Recommended:
Beth Povinelli, Economies of Abandonment
14 Hunger screening plus discussion of assigned materials
-Steve McQueen, Hunger FILM (SCREENING)
Patrick Anderson, So Much Wasted: Hunger, Performance, and the Morbidity of
Resistance. Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2010. (Selection TBD)
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/152961

Recommended:
Adam Phillips, “On Eating and Preferring Not To.”
Kafka, “The Hunger Artist.”
Banu Bargu, Starve and Immolate

19 no class

21 screening Modern Times

26 No
Charlie Chaplin, Modern Times
Glenn Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting The Colonial Politics of Recognition
(159-179)

Recommended:
Franz Kafka, “The Refusal”

Film Screening Schedule for Pedestrian Theory, Thurs nights 6-9 pm.

March 3 screening Pasolini, Teorema

March 17 Acts of defiance, Alec Macleod, 1992

April 7, Charles Burnett, Killer of Sheep

April 14 Steve McQueen, Hunger

April 21, Modern Times