Material Semiotics

This seminar will focus on the emerging body of literature on the materiality of the production, circulation, and mediation of paperwork as constituitive of modern forms of governance. We will discuss specific genres of paperworks - notes, memos, files, documents, as well as archives and other mnemonic technologies - both as cultural practices and reflexive objects, and examine how they produce modern social epistemologies of accountability, evidence, the fact, and truth in the fields of law, business, and public administration, as well as in civil society generally. Readings will include works by Max Weber, Bruno Latour, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Cornelia Vismann, Ann Stoler, and others. Prerequisite: graduate standing or consent of instructor.