what do we mean by new? what sort of strategies, tactics, memberships does it activate?

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<<<SECTION II: what’s new? Neo-liberalism? New materialisms? 

Anker. 2014. Orgies of Feeling. Duke. 978-0822356974. ASIN: B00NCU8PWA.

Gessen & Huff-Hannon, eds. 2014. Gay Propaganda. OR Books. 978-1939293350. ASIN: B00J7XJBWO.

Kirksey, ed. 2014. The Multispecies Salon. Duke. 978-0822356257. ASIN: B00PIKKE1C.

Povinelli. 2011. Economies of Abandonment. 978-0822350842. ASIN: B0068JZCAK.

Rodríguez. 2014. Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings. NYU. 978-0814764923. ASIN: B00L8BUIES.

FOR MIRANDA: Community: Burgett & Mendler, eds. 2014 (2nd ed). Keywords for American Cultural Studies. NYU. 978-0814708019. ASIN: B00PSKHO1.

Thursday 26 February – Anker, Gessen 

Thursday 5 March – Gessen, Rodríguez

Thursday 12 March – Povinelli, Kirksey [Thursday 12 March 5PM! Tavia Nyong'o at LGBT Series]

Thursday 19 March – SPRING BREAK 

Thursday 26 March – Povinelli, Kirksey, Anker, Gessen, Rodríguez <ANKER AT CLASS>
[Wednesday 1 APRIL <CORRECTION!: Miranda Joseph at LGBT Series: check out Burgett & Mendler: Community] 

Thursday 2 April – paper sessions 

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Gathering with, as, to create the strategies, tactics, memberships of differential consciousness.... How to identify, experience, note the affective resonances, pay attention to and honor and sometimes critique the oppositional consciousness/es entangled? 

How might we "distinguish, evaluate, and select tactics"? what do we notice emerging in the various politics, readings of power, deconstructions, differential perceptions, democratics we inhabit, witness, practice, are moving around by, and moved by in the ...new? now? actual everyday? How might we identify "situated knowledges," "globalizing psychic, cultural, and national sites," "place-based ecological activism," "political and cultural planetary geographies"? are these words you would use? your communities of action, affect, belonging would use? what are you moved to? how are you "learning to be affected"?

Make some lists, pictures, sets of quotation, tangles of citations, or other drafts for thinking and bring them to class! Connect them to our readings, our discussions, your histories and care-abouts! 

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Thursday 26 February – Orgies of Feeling in the politics of .... 

• READ: Read both Anker and Gessen as negotiated with our Director of Readings.

Be sure to be consider the difficulties and ...excitements? of trying
=to describe a range of meanings for "orgies of feeling" and
=how they might be distributed and/or silo-ed among "communities of practice" as well as
=how relatively general and even vague common language understandings might enable as well as
=confuse particular meanings or
=desires to define these words and their agencies, as well as
=realities they participate in.

How might "orgies of feeling" be the subject of Gessen Gay Propaganda collection too?

• ALSO EXAMINE, READ, CHECK LINKS AND PONDER: new TAB: communities of practice

• RECOMMENDED: Burgett & Mendler, eds. 2014 (2nd ed). Keywords for American Cultural Studies. TERM: Cvetkovich, "Affect" (13-16). Also Acknowledgements (vii-viii), Introduction (1-7) and Note on Classroom Use (9-11).
ALSO RECOMMENDED: on the Wikipedia: "LGBT Rights in Russia," here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Russia

• ALSO: find out what the term "pinkwashing" means. How can you tell when it is happening?
Gessen is going to be on campus in April. What do you learn about her on the web, what will her book and her person contribute to our course? Why is the book called "Gay Propaganda"? What about "propaganda" and LGBT people in Russia today? Are things getting better or worse for LGBT people in Russia? What makes this clear? Does this surprise you? why or why not? Why might pinkwashing be an important term for LGBT activisms? How could it be entangled with issues of LGBT rights in Russia?

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[OPTIONAL READING NOW, BUT WE MAY WISH TO REFER TO LATER: Claire Ainsworth (2015). Sex redefined: The idea of two sexes is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that. Nature 518 (19 February 2015): 288-291. doi:10.1038/518288a.  http://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews  ]

Just saw this on Facebook and like this science writer summary of findings since the nineties. Interesting elements perhaps in the narration, visualization, communication of intra-body action too. Could be understood to be the kind of knowledges that new materialisms might wish to work out and with and inspect and analyze.... What sorts of politics are appropriate for such analysis? What tactics are "friendly" to including new sciences while also being carefully aware of their ideological agencies? 

The new sciences of epigenetics are involved here, "turning genes on and off" as the popular press tends to put it, a new set of mechanisms for what was, until relatively recently, understood as a scientific fallacy, the inheritance of acquired characteristics, sometimes denominated Lamarckism.  A Soviet version of that  was debunked as Lysenkoism. You may wish to nose around on the web and begin to become familiar with these terms and issues.

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