College Courses 9 - Technology and Power

Institution:

Dartmouth College

Subject:

Description:

09W: 10A Technology and power have always been intimately intertwined. If technology in general is the means by which human beings effect change beyond the reach of the unadorned body, then this is necessarily also an exercise of power. To control technology is to wield power. In the contemporary world, the relationship between technology and power is of ever-increasing importance. We are living in an era when technology is often used not only to uphold and reinforce existing power relations but also to resist and transform them. From increasingly sophisticated surveillance technologies such as full body scans and networks of webcams to the ease with which capital and thus power flows across increasingly irrelevant national borders to the possibilities for radical participatory democracy opened up by internet technologies to the populist model of knowledge associated with wikis to the deconstruction and reconstruction of the body through technologies such as sex reassignment surgery, the contemporary world is structured through and by the complicated relationships between technology and power. This course aims to provide students with the theoretical vocabulary and critical skills necessary to understand these complex relationships. Readings will include the theories of power of such philosophers as Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, Foucault, Butler, Zizek and Agamben. Students will also conduct independent research on a particular technology, exploring its relationship to power and related concepts such as domination, oppression, agency, resistance, and the like. Allen, Evens.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.dartmouth.edu

Phone Number:

(603) 646-1110

Regional Accreditation:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Quarter

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