Critical Algorithm Studies
June 2018 – ongoing
(with graduate students and faculty of the School of Communication, SFU)
next meeting: Thursday, July 19, 2018
- (10 pp) Hooker, J.N. 1994. “Needed: An Empirical Science of Algorithms.” Operations Research 42(2): 201-212. http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/opre.42.2.201
- (9 pp) Bullynck, Maarten. 2016. “Histories of algorithms: Past, present and future.” Historia Mathematica, 43(3), 332–341. http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1TNB117f6j-t2L
- (10 pp) Seaver, Nick. 2013. “Knowing Algorithms.” In Media in Transition 8. Cambridge, MA. http://nickseaver.net/s/seaverMiT8.pdf
- (13 pp) Mahnke, Martina and Emma Uprichard. 2014 “Algorithming the Algorithm.” In Society of the Query Reader: Reflections on Web Search. René König and Miriam Rasch, eds. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. http://networkcultures.org/query/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2014/06/19.Mahnke_Uprichard.pdf
- Gillespie, Tarleton. 2016. “Algorithm.” In Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture, edited by Ben Peters. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. http://culturedigitally.org/2016/08/keyword-algorithm/
- (10 pp) Ziewitz, Malte. 2016. “Governing Algorithms: Myth, Mess, and Methods.” Science, Technology & Human Values. 41(1): 3-16. http://sth.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/09/30/0162243915608948.abstract
- (15 pp) Kitchin, Rob. 2017. “Thinking Critically about and Researching Algorithms.” Information, Communication and Society, 20(1). http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1154087#abstract
- (11pp) Beer, David. 2017. “The Social Power of Algorithms.” Information, Communication & Society, 20(1).
past meetings:
Thursday, June 7, 2018
- Safiya Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press, 2018). Chapters 1-2.
future readings will include:
- Siva Vaidhyanathan, Anti-Social Network: How Facebook Has Disconnected Citizens and Undermined Democracy (Oxford UP, 2018);
- Taina Bucher, IF…THEN: Algorithmic Power and Politics (Oxford UP, 2018);
- Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media (Yale UP, 2018);
- Meredith Broussard, Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World (MIT Press, 2018).
archive
Psychoanalysis, AI, and Cybernetics
February 2014 – May 2014
(with Atle Kjosen at University of Western Ontario)
Readings:
- Lydia Liu, The Freudian Robot: Digital Media and the Future of the Unconscious. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
- Luciana Parisi, Contagious Architecture: Aesthetics, Computation and Space. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013.
- Jacques Lacan, “Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty,” Ecrits, 161-175 + a lesson with Lacanian topologist Jeanne Lafont.
- Jacques Lacan, “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis,” Ecrits, 197-268.
- Jacques Lacan, Seminar II, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis (1954-1955)
Toronto Lacan Study Group
October 2011 – November 2013 | once in 3 weeks- with Ines de Anderson, Judith Hamilton, Reine-Marie Bergeron
Readings:
- Lacan, Jacques. Seminar XX: Encore. On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge (1972-1973)
Lacan / Media / Capitalism
Fall 2012 – Spring 2013 – Summer 2013 (bi-weekly) – with Allan Pero, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Atle Kjosen, Vince Manzerolle, and Bernd Frohmann
Primary reading:
Jacques Lacan, Seminar II, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis (1954-1955)
Readings:
Fall 2012
- Mark Bracher, “On the Psychological and Social Functions of Language” Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure, and Society, edited by Mark Bracher, Marshall W. Alcorn, Francoise Massardier-Kennedy, Ronald J. Corthell
- Jacques Lacan, “On Psychoanalytic Discourse”
- Friedrich Kittler, ”The World of the Symbolic—The World of the Machine,” in Literature, Media, Information Systems, ed. John Johnston (Amsterdam: G þ B Arts International, 1997)
- John Johnston, “Inmixing of Machines: Cybernetics and Psychoanalysis” from The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI
- Frederic Declercq, “Lacan on the Capitalist Discourse: Its Consequences for Libidinal Enjoyment and Social Bonds,” Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 11 (2006): 74–83
Winter 2013
- Luca Bosetti, “Three Questions on Prosthetic Technology and A-(d)iction,” Paragraph: The Journal of Modern Critical Theory Group 33 (2010)
- Fredric Jameson, “Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan: Marxism, Psychoanalytic Criticism and the Problem of the Subject”
- Steffen Bohm, Aanka Batta, “Just doing it: enjoying commodity fetishism with Lacan,” Organization 17 (2010)
- Veronique Voruz, “Psychoanalysis at the Time of the Posthuman: Insisting on the Outside-Sense,” Paragraph: The Journal of Modern Critical Theory Group 33 (2010)
- Louis Armand, “Language and the Cybernetic Mind,” Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 25.2 (2008): 127–152
- Louis Armand, “Symptom in the Machine: Lacan, Joyce, Sollers”
- Ellie Ragland, “Counting from 0 to 6: Lacan and the Imaginary Order” – A lecture delivered at the Center for 20th Century Studies
Summer 2013
- Samo Tomšič, “Homology: Marx and Lacan” S: Journal of the Jan van Eyck Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique 5 (2012): 98-113
- Pietro Bianchi, “From Representation to Class Struggle (A Response to Samo Tomšič)” S: Journal of the Jan van Eyck Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique 5 (2012): 114-126
- Stephanie Swales, Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject (Introduction, Chapters 1-3)
- Werner Bonefeld, “Capital as Subject and the Existence of Labour” in Open Marxism (182-212)
- Ellie Ragland, “Stealing Material: The Materiality of Language according to Freud and Lacan,” in Lacan & the Human Sciences ed. Alexandre Leupin, Un of Nebraska Press, 1991.
Speculative Realism
with Ben Woodard, Karen DM, Matthew Toth
Spring-Summer 2013
Gilles Chatelet – a selection from Les Enjeux du mobile and from De Visione Stellarum
Fall 2012 (weekly)
A. Prehistory: The CCRU and Non-philosophy
- Week 1 – “Cyber Positive” – Nick Land and Sadie Plant (5 pp)
- Week 2 – “What can Non-Philosophy Do?” – Francois Laruelle (22 pp)
- Week 3 – “Introduction,” – Bryant, Harman, Srnicek in The Speculative Turn (18 pp)
B. Speculative Realism: The Four Original Thinkers
- Week 4 – “Potentiality and Virtuality,” by Quentin Meillassoux in The Speculative Turn (13 pp)
- Week 5 – “The Revival of Metaphysics in Continental Philosophy” by Graham Harman” in Towards Speculative Realism (16 pp)
- Week 6 – “Concepts and Objects” by Ray Brassier in The Speculative Turn (19 pp)
- Week 7 – “Does Nature Stay What it Is?” by Iain Hamilton Grant in The Speculative Turn (18 pp)
C. Satellite Thinkers and The Future of Speculative Realism
- Week 8 – “X, Welcome!” – Michael O’Rourke and Stanimir Panayotov in Identities v8 n2 (34 pp)
- Week 9 – “Contingency and Complicity”- Reza Negarestani in The Medium of Contingency (8 pp); “Solar Inferno and the Earthbound Abyss (4 pp)
- Week 10 – “Objects and Systems,” – Jane Bennett at The Nonhuman Turn Conference – (35 Minutes); “A Response to Graham Harman’s ‘Marginalia and Radical Thinking’,” – Alexander Galloway (5 pp)
- Week 11 – “The Project of Non-Marxism,” – Katerina Kolozova (20 pp)
