Matter and Materiality

Catalog description

What if bodies were all there were? While considering Nietzsche, Foucault once wrote, "The body is the inscribed surface of events (traced by language and dissolved by ideas), the locus of a dissociated self (adopting the illusion of a substantial unity), and a volume in perpetual disintegration." This seminar will attempt to make sense of what it could mean to think bodies simultaneously as constituent surfaces, dissociating loci, and disintegrating volumes by exploring the long histories of matter, materiality, and materialism. It is strongly recommended that any students enrolling in this class have completed at least two Philosophy courses before it begins.