[ecrea] Critical Theory, Culture & Citizenship - intensive summer school to be taught by Rosi Braidotti

Rosi Braidotti has asked me to disseminate details of an intensive 
course she is teaching this summer in Utrecht. Description below, 
website with further details here 
_http://utrechtsummerschool.nl/index.php?type=courses&code=C30_ 
<http://utrechtsummerschool.nl/index.php?type=courses&code=C30>. Please 
distribute widely.

This is an intensive course convened and taught by Rosi Braidotti and an 
interdisciplinary team of co-teachers. It consists of keynote lectures 
in the morning and three thematic tutorials for four afternoons (the 
class ends at noon on Friday). The theme of the course is contemporary 
critical theory in the Continental philosophy tradition, with special 
reference to the work of Gilles Deleuze.

The course offers an introduction to contemporary critical debates on 
the construction of subjects. Cultural diversity, global migration, 
digital 'second life', genetically modified food, advanced prosthetics, 
robotics and reproductive technologies are familiar facets of our global 
and technologically mediated societies. How do they affect the 
self-understanding, the cultural representations and the social and 
political participations of contemporary subjects? The emphasis on 
nomadic theory aims to outline a project of sustainable modern 
subjectivity and to offer an original and powerful alternative for 
scholars working in cultural and social criticism.

Arranged thematically, the sessions of the course explore the different 
aspects of critical theory debates about contemporary subjectivity: 
embodiment, gender and racial differences, multi-cultural and 
post-secular citi¬zenship, issues linked to globalization, network 
societies and techno-science. The course stresses the productive 
potential of these features of our culture and it promotes the politics 
of affirmation, which emphasize the importance of affects and the 
imagination. It establishes a theoretical frame¬work that combines 
critique and creation, granting a major role to the arts and new media.

By inscribing nomadic subjects in the content of contemporary culture, 
the course also assesses the extent to which intense technological 
mediation and global networks have blurred the traditional distinction 
between the human and its others, both human and non-human others, thus 
exposing the non-naturalistic structure of the human subject. The course 
analyzes the escalating effects of the posthuman condition, which 
encompass new relationships to animals and other species and ultimately 
questions the sustainability of our planet as a whole. After delving 
into the inhumane and structurally unjust aspects of our culture by 
looking at new wars and contemporary conflicts, the course concludes by 
outlining new forms of cosmopolitan nomadic citizenship. Rather than 
perceiving the posthuman situation as a loss of cognitive and moral 
self-mastery, this course argues that it helps us make sense of our 
flexible nomadic identities.
The challenge for critical theory today consists in seizing the 
opportunities for new social bonding and community building, while 
pursuing sustainability and empowerment.