Michelle Bigenho: Political Economy of Pleasure
(with Bethany Ogdon)
This course was taught in Fall 2000.
Through a combination of anthropological, media studies, and cultural studies approaches, this course examines the social relations behind the production, marketing and consumption of enjoyment: photographic, culinary, sexual, cinematic, musical, and televisual. Students will be introduced to concepts of political economy, commodities, and the construction of desire and pleasure. This course will closely examine how an economy of pleasure crosses and often reinforces hierarchies of class, race, gender, and ethnicity. Readings will include selections from Marx on the fetishism of commodities and alienated labor, Simmel's Philosophy of Money, Appadurai's Social Life of Things, Lacan on jouissance, Zizek's "The Metastases of Enjoyment," Mintz' Sweetness and Power, and Lutz' and Collins' Reading National Geographic.
Prerequisite: Students in this course should have passed at least one division I exam.
This course is taught at the 200-level.