First Constellation: “History breaks down into images, not into stories”( – Walter Benjamin)
All watch the movie Apocalypse Now Redux (Netflix streaming, 202 minutes). Pay attention to the image juxtapositions, not the narrative. Juxtaposed to the first part (through the surfing scene, we will discuss the following readings:
February 6: Immanuel Kant, Toward Perpetual Peace (Google Mtholyoke.edu for text)
Kant, Idea for Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective
http://www.marxists.org/reference (student presenter)
February 13: Sayyid Qutb, Islam and Universal Peace
Murad Idris, “The Polemics of World Peace: Comparing the Peace Plans of Immanuel Kant and Sayyid Qutb” (pdf) (student presenter)
February 20: Walter Benjamin, last part of Artwork essay; first reading of: “On the Concept of History,” (student presenter)
Second Constellation: Pure Immanence
All watch the movie, Sokurov Faust (Netflix streaming, 116 minutes)
February 27: Gilles Deleuze, Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life (student presenter)
March 6: Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality [Morals] (student presenter)
March 13: Michael Tanner, Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction (student presenter on Sokurov’s movie Faustus)
Third Constellation: Silence
All watch the movie, Melancholia by Lars von Trier (Netflix streaming, 135 minutes)
March 20: John of Patmos, Revelation (student presenter)
March 27: [Spring Vacation; All watch Bergman, The Seventh Seal – Netflix DVD, 96 min]
April 3: William Blake, images of Revelation; Marriage of Heaven and Hell (student presenter)
April 10: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus (last sections) and Bergman’s film, The Seventh Seal (student presenter)
Fourth Constellation: Politics
All watch the movie, Sokurov, Solnze (Netflix DVD, 110 minutes)
April 17: Giorgio Agamben “The Fourth Day” from The Time That Remains; Alain Badiou, Idea of Communism (excerpts) (student presenter)
April 24: Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (student presenter)
May 1: Susan Buck-Morss, “Visible Empire” (student presenter)
Fifth Constellation: Theology
All watch the movie, Jafar Panahi, Crimson Gold (DVD, not available from Netflix); and/or Elia Suleiman, The Time that Remains (Netflix, streaming, 109 minutes), Suleiman, Divine Intervention (Netflix, streaming 85 minutes) and/or Nick Broomfield, Sarah Palin: You Betcha! (Netflix, streaming, 91 minutes)
May 8: Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” second reading (student presenter); Buck-Morss Dialectics of Seeing, pp. 196-201.
May 15: Epilogue (student presenter)
