32212
Seminar
SoSe 19: Network Narratives: The Poetics of Interconnectivity
James Dorson
Comments
We live in an age of networks. Since the 1990s, the network form has not only become a privileged model of socioeconomic organization but has also reorganized knowledge: we don’t only live interconnected lives, we also increasingly think in terms of interconnectivity. While decentralized network forms have posed a challenge to hierarchical forms of organization, alternately subverting and intensifying mechanicism of social control, networks also pose a challenge to narrative forms of representation. If a narrative may be defined as “a causally related sequence of events” (Cohn), how then can narratives be used to represent a dynamic, fluid reality—a “space of flows” (Castells)—defined by open-ended, closure-defying, multidirectional causality? This class takes up the question of how we may conceptualize “network narratives” by examining how contemporary U.S. authors have experimented with the network form in order to represent the experience of interconnectivity. Besides theoretical texts on networks from the perspectives of science, sociology, aesthetics, and philosophy, we will be reading the following literary texts: Nicholson Baker’s Mezzanine (1988), Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange (1997), Juliana Spahr’s The Transformation (2007), and Jena Osman’s The Network (2010). close
14 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Tue, 2019-04-09 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-04-16 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-04-23 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-04-30 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-05-07 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-05-14 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-05-21 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-05-28 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-06-04 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-06-11 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-06-18 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-06-25 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-07-02 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2019-07-09 14:00 - 16:00