Visualizing Others: Colonial and Postcolonial Visual Culture

Description

UNDERGRADUATE   Module Description The course explores a range of representational practices, their relationship to power, and their contemporary legacy. It offers an introduction to key debates about the visual aspects of power and how postcolonial theory can illuminate these dynamics. Combining empirical ethnographic case studies with theories from anthropology, postcolonial and subaltern studies, as well as philosophy and visual culture studies, the course extends the discussion beyond colonialism's original geographic boundaries to address hierarchy, desire, agency, and imagination in asymmetrical political contexts. Topics include the political impact of visual representations of rurality and "the South" in tourism and the nation-state, their role in contemporary art (e.g., documenta 14), and how these representations generate stereotypes that are both reproduced and disrupted in everyday contexts. The course also examines debates about photography and its role in power dynamics (e.g., the colonial archive, advertising, postcards), visual "Orientalism" and its associated issues of fascination, desire, and ambivalence, and the question of resistance through visual ethnography. Additional content addresses photography's entanglement in a "civil contract," the visual cultures of tourism and the heritage industry, the configurations of the South and North in anthropology, and related discussions on leisure, neoliberalism, degrowth, nativism, nationalism and subjugation. Finally, the course engages with debates about the politics of photography in the representation of social “crises,” suffering, and pain.    Module Content: UG has a two hour lecture element and a one hour tutorial.  Teaching content introduces students to key theoretical debates about power, representation, politics and social imagination. The content draws on a variety of ethnographic and other case studies that is both historically deep and geographically expansive.  Develop a sophisticated understanding of key works in postcolonial theory, stressing debates within what is often presented as a homogeneous perspective (eg Bhabha versus Said; Azoulay versus Tagg, postcolonial theory vs Marxism, Barthes vs Foucaultean approaches to photography).  Bring anthropological perspectives to material that is often treated as the preserve of Art History or Global History. Offer a visual-culture perspective on problems discussed in anthropology, political philosophy and other social sciences such as inequality, agency, domination, and resistance.   Learning Outcomes: After the course students will have an understanding of:  The main aspects of global colonial and postcolonial history, being able to differentiate between different regional and national practices and experiences.   Develop a knowledge of representational techniques and reproductive technologies (from lithography to photography and film, both fiction and documentary). Also develop better finessed vocabularies for describing the fusion of aesthetics and politics and their struggle and contextualization with regimes of power.    An introductory knowledge of a range of postcolonial approaches and how they related to broader theoretical positions (eg Said in relation to Foucault, Bhabha in relation to Derrida, the discussion about the European carnival and its political affordances, debates about voyeurism, photography and exoticism).  A broader knowledge of the history of anti-colonial resistance as well as the history of the European nation state.  A more nuanced understanding of the ways in which “knowledge: generally, and anthropological knowledge in particular has been central to, but also resistant to, colonialism.    Indicative Delivery Method: The course will be delivered through weekly illustrated 2 hour lecture designed to introduce unfamiliar material to students. These will be paired with a weekly 1 hour tutorials offered in small groups  which will focus on opening up the material to debate and discussion and creative student presentations that are designed to bring student-led perspectives on a particular problematic concerning the politics of visual representation. Where possible and appropriate students will be encouraged to visit permanent and temporary exhibitions reproducing and/or critiquing the traditions and issues engaged by the course or to watch particular films and/or video material that circulates online and bring in to the class material from popular culture and the media for conversation.   Additional Information: Collaborative student presentations in the seminars will be given detailed feedback by the course tutor.   POSTGRADUATE    Module Description The course explores a range of representational practices, their relationship to power, and their contemporary legacy. It offers an introduction to key debates about the visual aspects of power and how postcolonial theory can illuminate these dynamics. Combining empirical ethnographic cas