Thing Theory 2008 (syllabus)

thing theory (2008)

anth g6085

course description
An intensified concern with materiality and the slippery category of
things has emerged in the past decade as an explicitly
interdisciplinary endeavor involving anthropologists, archaeologists, art
historians, political scientists, philosophers, and literary critics among
others. The new field of material culture studies that has resulted
inverts the longstanding study of how people make things by asking
also how things make people, how they mediate social relationships,
how they gather particular social worldsultimately how things can be
understood as having a form of subjectivity, being, and agency of their
own. In this seminar, we will explore many of the recent foundational
works by Bruno Latour, Alfred Gell, Tim Ingold, Graham Harman, Web
Keane, Daniel Miller, W. J. T. Mitchell and others who have situated
their work at the increasingly blurred boundaries between such things
as object and subject, gift and commodity, art and artifact, alienability
and inalienability, materiality and immateriality, as well as at the
disciplinary boundaries between ethnography, archaeology, art history
and philosophy.

object studies
Seminar participants will not be asked to compose a traditional academic term paper. Rather, each
participant will construct two object studies. Unlike the classic anthroplogical methodology in which the
cultural world is approached through the thoughts, experiences, and actions of human agents, these
studies should follow in the spirit of Barthess Mythologies, offering relatively brief sketches that rely upon
object agents or actants as their entre into the social. The primary ethnographic gaze should be upon an
object individual, a class of objects, or a discrete community of objectswhat Appadurai has referred to as
a methodological fetishism in which one accepts that it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their
human and social context. Beyond this core focus on the object world, participants will have the latitude
to use these sketches as platforms for commentary on issues of identity, meaning, structure,
representation, social critique, materiality, immateriality, the slip from object to thing, etc. as they move
through object agents to an analysis of the human worlds that are gathered by them.

Object studies will be presented at the middle and end of the term. The format of these short
presentations will be at the discretion of the participant, although use of imagery is encouraged. Past
presentations have incorporated live bagpipe performance and strip tease videos to make particular
theoretical pointssuffice to say that anything goes.

method of evaluation
Grades will be determined based upon class
participation, presentations, and the two essays.

texts
The following texts are required and will be available for purchase at Labyrinth:

Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Clarendon Press, New York.

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Thing Theory 2008 (syllabus)

Harman, Graham. 2005. Guerrilla metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things. Chicago.

Miller, Daniel (editor). 2005. Materiality. Duke University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

The remaining readings will be in the Class Files section of Courseworks.

**

session 1: the turn toward things

Brown, Bill. 2001. Thing theory. Critical Inquiry 28(1):1-22.

Olsen, B. 2003. Material culture after text: re-membering things. Norwegian Archaeological Review 36(3):87104.

Preda, A. 1999. The turn to things: arguments for a sociological theory of things. The Sociological Quarterly 40(2):347-366.

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session 2: the fetish, or the illusory agency of the object

Discussants: chase, ernie, anjeli

Ellen, Roy. 1988. Fetishism. Man (N.S.) 23:213-35.

Keane, Webb. 1998. Calvin in the Tropics: objects and subjects at the religious frontier. In Border Fetishisms:
Material Objects in Unstable Spaces, edited by Patricia Spyer, pp. 13-34. Routledge, New York.

Pels, Peter. 1998. The spirit of matter: on fetish, rarity, fact and fancy. In Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in
Unstable Spaces, edited by Patricia Spyer, pp. 91-121. Routledge, New York.

Stallybrass, Peter. 1998. Marxs coat. In Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces, edited by
Patricia Spyer, pp. 183-207. Routledge, New York.

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session 3: the work of art, or the indexical agency of the object

Discussants: allen, audrey, maxim

Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Clarendon Press, New York.

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session 4: the work of art II

Discussants: glenda, michael, megan

Belting, Hans. 2005. Image, medium, body: a new approach to iconology. Critical Inquiry 31(2):302-319.

Knappett, Carl. 2006. Beyond skin: layering and networking in art and archaeology. Cambridge Archaeological
Journal 16(2):239-51.

Mitchell, W. J. Thomas. 1996. What Do Pictures Really Want? October 77:71-82.

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Thing Theory 2008 (syllabus)

Pinney, Christopher. 2001. Piercing the skin of the idol. In Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of
Enchantment, edited by Christopher Pinney and Nicholas Thomas, pp. 157-180. Berg.

Thomas, Nicholas. 2001. Introduction. In Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment, edited
by Christopher Pinney and Nicholas Thomas, pp. 1-12. Berg.

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session 5: the stone, or the materiality of the object

Discussants: rachel, louis

Miller, Daniel. 2005. Materiality: an introduction. In Materiality, edited by Daniel Miller, pp. 1-50. Duke
University Press.

Keane, Webb. 2005. Signs are not the garb of meaning: on the social analysis of material things. In Materiality,
edited by Daniel Miller, pp. 182-205. Duke University Press.

Engelke, Matthew. 2005. Sticky subjects and sticky objects: the substance of African Christian healing. In
Materiality, edited by Daniel Miller, pp. 118-139. Duke University Press.

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session 6: the stone II

Discussants: sev

Pinney, Chris. 2005. Things happen. In Materiality, edited by Daniel Miller.

Ingold, Tim. 2007. Materials against materiality. Archaeological Dialogues 14:1-16.

Tilley, Christopher. 2007. Materiality in materials. Archaeological Dialogues 14:16-20.

Knappett, Carl. 2007. Materials with materiality? Archaeological Dialogues 14:20-23.

Miller, Daniel. 2007. Stone age or plastic age? Archaeological Dialogues 14:23-27.

Nilsson, Bjrn. 2007. An archaeology of material stories. Archaeological Dialogues 14:27-30.

Ingold, Tim. 2007. Writing texts, reading materials. A response to my critics. Archaeological Dialogues 14:31-
38.

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session 7: presentations
TBA

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session 8: the tool, or the cybernetic agency of the subject-object

Discussants: chris, ernie, laurent

Ingold, Tim. 2000. Tools, minds and machines: an excursion in the philosophy of technology. In The Perception
of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, pp. 294-311. Routledge, London.

Ingold, Tim. 2000. On weaving a basket. In The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling
and Skill, pp. 339-348. Routledge, London.

Ingold, Tim. 2000. Of string bags and birds nests. In The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood,
Dwelling and Skill, pp. 349-361. Routledge, London.

Latour, Bruno. 2000. The Berlin key or how to do words with things. In Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture,
edited by Paul Graves-Brown, pp. 10-21. Routledge, New York.

**

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Thing Theory 2008 (syllabus)

session 9: the collective, or the networked agency of the thing

Discussants: megan, sarah, tim

Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard University Press.

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session 10: the collective II

Discussants: caitlin, sarah, eric

Bennett, Jane. 2005. The agency of assemblages and the North American blackout. Public Culture 17(3):445-
65.

Bennett, Jane. 2004. The force of things: steps toward an ecology of matter. Political Theory 32(3):347-372.

Latour, Bruno. 1999. Chapter 6: A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans. In Pandoras Hope: Essays on the
Reality of Science Studies, pp. 174-215. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Oppenheim, Robert. 2007. Actor-network theory and anthropology after science, technology and society.
Anthropological Theory 7(4):471-493.

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session 11: the thing, and its gatherability

Discussants: katie, fan, louis

Heidegger, Martin. 2001. The thing. In Poetry, Language, and Thought, pp. 165-182. Harper Collins, New York. -

Kharkhordin, Oleg. 2005. Things as Res publicae. In Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy, edited by
Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, pp. 280-289. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Latour, Bruno. 2004. Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical
Inquiry 30(2).

Rorty, Richard. 2005: Heidegger and the atomic bomb. In Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy,
edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, pp. 274-275. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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session 12: object-oriented philosophy

Discussants: caitlin, tim

Harman, Graham. 2005. Chapters 1-7. Guerrilla Metaphysics, pp. 1-99. Open Court, Chicago.

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session 13: object-oriented philosophy

Discussants: all

Harman, Graham. 2005. Chapters 8-12. Guerrilla Metaphysics, pp. 1-99. Open Court, Chicago.

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session 14: presentations II

TBA
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Thing Theory 2008 (syllabus)

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