History of Consciousness - Winter 1999

Instructor: John Sanbonmatsu
Phone: 459-2757 Email: batpoet@ucsc.edu

THE END OF THE WORLD (AS WE KNOW IT):

Millenarianism, Identity, and Utopia

On the eve of the third millennium, many are predicting plagues and war, killer asteroids, the end of nature, the fall of nations, global economic collapse, fascism and revolution, the coming of a Messiah, even Apocalypse. Is it really the end of the world?

Certainly we bear witness to some of the most sweeping changes in the history of world civilization. Truly global forces--among them, capitalism, information technology, and a new world culture--are rapidly transforming all aspects of human and nonhuman being, from the role of the state and the organization of work, to world climate and species-habitats, the family, and daily life. As individuals, we may experience these changes as a sense of exhiliration or a sudden, strong connection to a group or personal identity. But we may also feel dislocation, uncertainty, anger, or lack of hope.

In this course, we will try to make sense of our experiences as millenarians by taking a fix on the dizzying array of economi, structures, technologies, and systems of power which are likely to continue shaping the world, and our experiences of it, well into the next century. Our primary focus will be on the dialectic (or contradictory relationship) between these enormous and imposing historical forces, on the one hand, and our own possibilities as individuals and social agents, on the other.

The course begins with religious and right-wing apocalyptic visions and ends with Tony Kushner's utopic play Angels in America about AIDS, prophecy, solidarity, and hope in the post-Cold War era.

Readings are structured broadly around the themes of identity, community, and the spirit of utopia. Where does the idea of the end of the world come from? How is it being manifested today as we approach the year 2000? How are different social movements--from the Zapatistas in Mexico and the American militias, to facists and religious cults in Japan--contending with globalization through acts of political resistance and identity-formation? How are new information technologies destroying, and rebuilding, the networks of social being which connect us to one another? Will nature, and other species, be able to survive the new regime of global capitalism? Will we?

COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Attendance at all class sessions. Three short (5-10 pp.) papers.

REQUIRED TEXTS: Available at Slug Books, 124 Cardiff Place

Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity

Morris Dees, Gathering Storm

T. Robbins and S. Palmer, Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem

Tony Kushner, Angels in America (two volumes)

Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Robert K. Schaeffer, Understanding Globalization

Course Reader

COURSE SCHEDULE

[Note to students: final version may be slightly different]

Week 1 THE END OF THE WORLD?

Book of Daniel & The Revelation of John of Patmos

(READER)

Week 2 APOCALYPSE THEN...

Robbins and Palmer, pp. 1-23

"The Book of Revelation," Perrin and Duling (READER)

W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming" (READER)

N. Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium (READER)

Recommended:

U. Kortner, The End of the World (RESERVE)

Week 3 APOCALYPSE NOW...THE STATE AS "ANTI-CHRIST"

Castells, pp. 243-308

Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear (READER)

Robbins and Palmer, pp. 1-23; "Latter Day Revisited," pp. 229-

244; also, "Religious Totalism," pp. 261-282

Skim: P. Lamy, Millennium Rage (READER)--chapter 1,

"Millennium Rage" and Chapter 2, "Apocalypse"; also, Chapter 7,

"Messiah" in READER or pp. 94-116 in Robbins and Palmer

Guest speaker Connell O'Donovan on "Mormon Apocalyptic"

Film: "Waco: The Rules of Engagement" (1997)

Recommended: "The Mormon Church: Made in America"

(READER)

The Turner Diaries (RESERVE)

"Blood in the Face" (film about the US neo-Nazis--McHenry)

Week 4 RACIAL MYTH AND THE THOUSAND-YEAR REICH

David Welch, The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda

(READER)

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf (READER)

Documents from the Third Reich (READER)

Robbins and Palmer, "Millennarians and Violence," pp. 247-260

Morris Dees, Gathering Storm

P. Lamy, Millennium Rage, Chapter 5, "Antichrist" (READER)

Film: "Architecture of Doom" (1990)

Recommended: Wilhelm Reich, "The Race Theory" (READER)

K. Theleweit, "Floods, Bodies, Histories" (RESERVE)

Week 5 ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR:

The New Global Economic Order

*Paper #1 due at start of class.

Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party

Schaeffer, Globalization, pp. 1-36, 121-142 (READER)

"Unchained Melody" (READER)

"Storm Clouds of Asia" (READER)

Finish Part I of Angels in America, "Millennium Approaches"

Recommended: G. Becker, "Make the World Safe for

`Creative Destruction'" (READER)

Roger Altman, "The Nuke of the 90s" (READER)

E. Malkin, "Mexico: Why AT&T and MCI Are Up in Arms"

(READER)

Week 6 INSURGENTS AGAINST THE NEW GLOBAL ORDER

Castells, pp. 1-4, 68-109, 354-362

Subcommander Marcos, Shadows of Tender Fury (READER)

Robbins and Palmer, pp. 285-324

Schaeffer (TBA)

Week 7 THE DEFENSE OF IDENTITY

Paper #2 due in class (unless you chose the Kidlat assignment)

Castells, pp. 5-67

Karel Capek, "Big and Little" (READER)

F. Jameson, "`Art Naif' and the Admixture of Worlds"

(READER)

R. Schaeffer, "The Defense of Separatism," pp. 297-319

(READER)

Carl Boggs, "Decline of the Public Sphere" (RESERVE)

*Film: "The Perfumed Nightmare" (PHILLIPINES: Kidlat

Tahimik, 1986)

Week 8 TECHNOUTOPIA & TECHNOREALISM

Public flyer--"The Year 2000 Computer Problem" (READER)

Castells, Rise of the Network Society, "The Net and the Self" and

"Conclusion" pp. 1-25, 469-478 (READER)

"The Y2K Solution: Run for Your Life!!" Wired Magazine

(READER)

Robbins and Palmer, pp. 139-159

Andy Grove, "Only the Productive Survive" (READER)

Technorealism (READER)

Jeremy Rifkin, "The Biotech Century" (READER)

Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (READER)

Recommended:

"Marching to Different Drummers" (READER)

Unabomber Manifesto, by "FC" (RESERVE)

Week 9 THE END OF NATURE?

Vladimir Nabokov, "The Wood-Sprite" (READER)

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (READER)

Carolyn Merchant, "Dominion Over Nature" (READER)

Global warming articles (READER)

Castells, pp. 110-133

Robbins and Palmer, pp. 119-137

Film: "I Do Not Know What It Is that I Am Like" (Bill Viola)

Recommended: Jorg Zutter, "Interview with Bill Viola"

(READER)

"Into the Hills," Chris Thompson (READER)

B. McKibben, The End of Nature (RESERVE)

"Ganapati: A Spirit in the Bush" (film--on RESERVE)

Week 10 ANGELS IN AMERICA

*Final paper due in class.

Tony Kushner, Angels in America (both volumes)

Castells, pp. 308-351; Angels playbill (READER)

This seminar will address 'Science, Technology, and Medicine in Colonial and Post-Colonial Contetxs'. How has the field of science studies conceptualized 'global science', 'local knowledge', 'colonial science', and post-colonial science'? How do categories like 'modern science' and 'indigenous science' emerge, and whom do they serve? Both historical and contemporary cases will be considered, and the emphasis will be on finding and analyzing primary documents, although we will also read published analyses.

Readings and case materials will be drawn from the following:

1) studies of human diversity (race studies, genome projects, population biology);

2) ecology and environmentalism (efforts to build interfaces between 'scientific ecology' and 'traditional ecological knowledge' in forest conservation struggles;

3) anthropological approahes to 'comparative knowledge systems' (consider, for example, intellectual property rights and ways of doing 'property', navigational technologies, and representations of landscapes);

4) practices in collecting and museum display (including ethnographic, botanical, zoological, and agricultural contexts);

5) medicine (how do the microbes and people interact differently in worlds shaped by AIDS, polio, and small pox? how does the visual representation of disease matter? what are the cultural politics of epidemics from cholera toebola? how do race, gender, and disease figure in the history of medicine?);

6) nuclear sciences and politics (especially the nuclear landscapes of the U.S. Southwest and the Pacific).

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students except in exceptional cases and by permission.

Revised 7/26/04.