COL5131H: Non Disclosure Acts

Sexual predators purchase secrecy from their victims, billionaires hide obscene wealth in off-shore bank accounts, government spies conduct counter intelligence under false identities — so many dirty truths are managed today by what we might call "non disclosure acts." But the double negative contained in the category of the "non disclosure" figures a limit to these agreements and opens up to the most pressing aesthetic, philosophical, and political questions regarding what constitutes truth and representation. In this seminar, we will focus on the category of disclosure as a way to question such key modern binaries as public-private, exposure-concealment, knowable-unknowable, conscious-unconscious, reform-revolution, and guilt-innocence. We will study theorizations of disclosure by such thinkers as Heidegger (unconcealment), Marx (ideology critique), Derrida (deconstruction), Lacan (the real), Butler (performativity), Barad (quantum entanglement), Karatani (transcritique), Zizek (the parallax) and Badiou (truth procedures). We will also study artistic engagements with disclosure, ranging from film and performance art to the novel and dance.

0.50
St. George