240148 SE VM1 / VM4 - Cultural Production, Social Relations of Domination and the Making of World Politics (2026S)

Social relations of domination rest on the social relations of production and reproduction, exploitation and capital accumulation, that is on the material compromises among competing interests of social forces. Cultural production, like politics or the state, is a site of social struggles over meaning and hegemony, encompassing contests for resources, power, and interpretive authority. Black feminists such as Patricia Hill Collins, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks early identified how marginalized groups, excluded from universities and scientific knowledge production, articulated their ideas and intersectional critiques in alternative social and institutional spaces. Speeches by political activists, as well as literary practices, music, cinema, and art, thus emerge as spaces where critiques of domination can be voiced, and diverse forms of oppression are rendered visible and problematized.

Scholars in cultural studies have long understood cultural production and practice as a field in which, alongside hegemonic ways of thinking and living, emergent forms of thought and social organization also take shape. In the first part of the course, we develop a theoretical framework by integrating approaches in political economy, cultural studies and intersectional critiques. This framework enables us to analyze the interdependence of various forms of oppression and the complex multilayered nature of power relations.

The course is organized around several thematic units, each illustrated by one or two case studies. Drawing on essays and novels by different authors, we examine racism, classism, sexism, and heteronormativity as structural sources of harm and psychological trauma, and investigate how structural disadvantages, everyday microaggressions and societal norms shape, define, and influence lived experience and self-perception. How do writers deal with societal dynamics and help us confront our own unconscious or unreflected normative assumptions and therefore provide an insightful reading experience? Another part of the course explores the arts in relation to hegemonic state-building, focusing on examples from Latin America and postcolonial African states. A further section focuses on art-led methodologies, auto/biographies as historical sources and material conditions of cultural production. Alongside debates on politics of language in African literature, we explore the counter-hegemonic potential of the arts, particularly through feminist art collectives against gender-based violence and the arts’ role in raising social awareness about issues such as climate change. The development of art markets and festivals, as well as the digitization and decolonization of museum politics, round off the course program.