124263 KO Critical Media Analysis (2016S)

This course will consider how the terms the abject/abjection - icon/iconicity are defined in groundbreaking CS-theories and explore how these terms are used as tools to explain for cultural practices in diverse socio-historical and medial contexts. We will examine in detail how both terms are defined in various theoretical interdisciplinary frameworks.
CS-theories reveal that an icon is perceived to represent universal concepts, emotions, and meanings. Taking a Foucaultdian perspective, we will see that such ideals are mostly set up by a culture's master power-discourses and bear strong normative functions. Icons can thus be deconstructed as supporting repressive universalized identity-concepts.
In this context, we will position our discussion of cultural constructions of the abject. In a poststructuralist view, the abject poses a threat to our identity and stability as subjects. Julia Kristeva explains that the abject is neither subject nor object - something that does not respect limits, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the uncanny.
Considering the cultural function of the abject as scapegoat, we will see that the abject lplays a vital role in various fields of CS-analysis.
Following Judith Butler, we will see how subjects are constructed within particular networks where the abject functions as the constitutive outside: as the locus of all that is excluded so that normative bodies & identities may emerge, but also as the zone of excess which puts these constantly into question.

The course's major aim will be to identify icons and investigate the simultaneous construction of abjects in order to explore their disruptive qualities and voices.
Our focus will be directed on 4 fields of analysis:
Deconstructions of concepts of femininity and masculinity
Queer Desire and Abjection
Sci-Fi Dystopias
Institutional Regimes