Advanced Problems in the Rhetoric of Political Theory – Technology and the Concept of the Political in the Automatic Age

This seminar-style class will take a close look at the relationship between technology and politics in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will begin with an intensive reading of two foundational thinkers — Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt — before tracking a number of approaches to the problem of technology. Readings will include themes such as war, violence, surveillance, and international order. We will end the class with Bruno Latour’s meditation on Gaia and the future of the earth in the Anthropocene.