This weekend at The Public School
This weekend at The Public School…
Sunday, 12:00
Kultural Kapital
Within the arts, cultural capital often describes how value, authorship, credit, etc. is distributed within collaborative projects (particularly when there is not actual money exchanged). At a broader scale, although web sites like YouTube and Facebook generate actual revenue for somebody, most of the people who use the sites are giving their labor in exchange for something non-monetary.
I guess this could go with the Pierre Bourdieu class that someone else just proposed, given that he wrote the book on cultural capital, but at the same time I think the class should try to apply these ideas specifically to ostensibly progressive, collaborative cultural (artistic) practices. Why? It seems as though most collective or collaborative projects that fall apart tend to do so when what they’ve been doing produces capital of some kind and it’s been distributed in a way that seems inappropriate to those involved.
How is it distributed? You can’t count it out like dollars.
Also, collaborative extends beyond simply “I am collaborating with you” activities, but it also refers to a system of activities within a community, which may or may not recognize their codependencies and interrelations. What ethics is required by an acknowledgment of how cultural capital functions?
Is anxiety about cultural capital used cynically by careerists to take credit for work they didn’t do?
How can cultural capital be mobilized in the arts (which largely functions in this kind of economy) towards more exciting ends than making an individual into a commodity?
Perhaps this also intersects with the accreditation class in a weird way, because cultural capital isn’t just a narrow art-world concern about dividing up credits and acknowledgments… it refers to the connections someone has/ makes, to the manners they learned by hanging out with the right people, etc. which, in a way, validates certain forms of education over others.
This class is a little messy in its current proposal form, but I (Sean Dockray) would like to teach it with Christina Ulke, with whom I’ve been occasionally discussing the topic. Things will take shape in the comments — would love to hear other peoples’ ideas, takes on the topic, questions, and so on.
Sunday, 7:00 pm
Rebirth of Pragmatism
This class looks at American pragmatism from its inception in James and Dewey to its more recent revival and reconfiguration in Rorty and Cavell. By looking at writings on art, literature, ethics, philosophy and politics, we attempt to identify what constitutes pragmatist thought and discuss its anti-essentialist, anti-foundationalist and anti-dualist underpinnings. Throughout the course we will also attempt to make connections to continental thinkers like Nietzsche and Deleuze, as well as discuss the issue raised by Stanley Fish in his essay “Truth and Toilets” about the potential impact of pragmatism on everyday life. Taught by Sarah Kessler and Chandler McWilliams