EDUCATION / UNIVERSITY MASTER'S DEGREE / TEACHING PLANS

Communication and cultural studies (Master in Film and Screen Studies)

Presentation Competences and Objectives Methodology Contents Bibliography Back to the Master

Program details

Subject: Communication and cultural studies

Course: Second

Semester: 1

Modality: Compulsory

Professors: Eudald Espluga, Jordi Costa

Presentation

Section 1 by Eloy Fernández Porta

This section of the course has been conceived as a dynamic and interactive introduction to the main axes of 21st century cultural criticism. The conceptual repertoire includes diverse criteria from aesthetics and gender studies, presented with a sociological and biopolitical approach. We will approach the space of contemporary criticism as a space of importation, reconfiguration and assemblage of active and participatory practices that take place in neighbouring territories of culture. These are concerns that we will examine throughout the 30 hours of this section.

Section 2 by Jordi Costa

The second section of the course focuses on the case study of Counterculture as an interweaving of cultural dissidences that outlined the possibility of a transformative, vital, disordered and non-programmatic utopia, which ended up being neutralised through various strategies. Tentacular and multiform, the Counterculture poses stimulating challenges in the field of cultural studies due to its ungraspable and ephemeral condition, which, nevertheless, left a trace in different fields that invites us to wonder about its subterranean survival and its potential for reactivation.

Competences and Objectives

Section 1

General competences

To become familiar with the reference vocabulary of critical theory.
Develop the habit of analysing aesthetic phenomena from a gender perspective.
To recognise the critical foundation of culture-creating practices in the global world.
Develop a transversal, intersectional and interdisciplinary perspective.
To plan a writing, anthology or critical curatorial project

Specific competences

Construct criteria for current aesthetic judgement and evaluation.
Approach critical writing in a creative, affective and innovative way.
Be able to identify, codify and learn to construct cultural currents.
Incorporate the skills of the prescriber, the coolhunter and the hypercritic.
Carry out group work on one of the themes developed throughout the course.

Section 2

Counterculture seems by definition to reject any univocal, ordered and programmatic approach. The content of the subject proposes one of the many possible routes and therefore tries to stimulate in the student the possibility of outlining other networks and paths. The aim is to form critical subjects capable of proposing new nodes, tracing other origins and finding new latencies of the countercultural among the cultures and subcultures of the strict present.

Methodology

Section 1

The distinctive features of this section of the course require a special emphasis on the development of vocabulary terms, as well as discussion and dialogue activities. These activities are divided into: a) The colloquia, which will be organised by means of an initial presentation by a group of students, and a round of questions predefined by the teacher. b) The oral presentation of the group work which will be done individually, so that the contribution of each member can be specifically evaluated.

As regards the group work, it will be coordinated by the teacher, from the initial proposal to the final result, including development proposals, recommended bibliography and case studies.

Section 2

Lectures complemented by the projection of audiovisual material, analysis of texts and dialogues with possible guests. Each session will stimulate debate and the exchange of ideas, encouraging possible connections between the subject matter and other cultural realities and phenomena not covered in the syllabus.

Section 1

UNIT 1 INTRO: A MUSICAL INVITATION TO CULTURAL CRITICISM
- Presentation of the course. Cultural criticism and creative prose. It’s not just music. Szendi: ‘earworms’ and exhausted songs. Hornby: autobiography as aesthetics of reception.
- Listening/viewing: Dan Graham, Rock My Religon. YouTube playlist.
UNIT 2 TIME TECHNOLOGICALLY PRODUCED
- Natural time and technical time. Chronos and aion. Dynamics of fashion. Simmel and temporality. The dynamics of trends considered as seasonal rhythm.
- Readings: Leopardi, Speranza, RealTime.
UNIT 3 NOMOGRAPHY
- Dialectics of the norm and transgression. Genealogy of rupture. Erotics of censorship. The rule of deregulation.
- Readings: Butler / Of the Norm considered as one of the Fine Arts.
UNIT 4 EMOCRITICS
- Moral, immoral and ambivalent feelings. The notion of ’emotional capitalism’ and its five associated terms. Anti-romantic visions of sentimental life.
- Readings: Perniola, Illouz, Emociónese así.
UNIT 5 SURFING THE 4TH WAVE
- Criticism with violet glasses. Modalities of gender perspectives. Feminism of equality and feminism of difference. Satire and gender production.
- Readings: Russ, Moreno, De Diego.
UNIT 6 COLLEAGUE, WHERE IS MY PHALLUS?
- Writing from the mutation of masculinities. Deconstructions and reconstructions of virility. Androgyny, post-gender and cuir.
- Readings: Aliaga, Cortés.
- Listening: Spotify playlist Medianenas & Milhombres.
UNIT 7 CULTURAL CRITICISM AND THE SCIENCES OF THE PSYCHE
- The evils of the times. Discomfort, anxiety and drive in contemporary culture. “The unconscious is out there”.
- Readings: Zizek, Butler.
UNIT 8 MUSEUM’S MEMORIES
- Session in an exhibition centre, with the participation of a curator. The exhibition as a critical device. The curatorial discourse and the catalogue as an essay.
- Readings: Martínez Collado, Ramírez.
UNIT 9 WHAT’S NEW, MAN?
- Theories of novelty. Novelty in art and technology. The avant-garde. Postmodernity. Afterpop. The post-internet era.
- Readings: Boccioni, Lyotard, Groys.
UNIT 10 CRITICISM IN VIGNETTES
- The graphic essay. Atlas of thought. From Aby Warburg to the comic essayists.
- Readings: Pajak. Bechdel.

Section 2

UNIT 1. BIRTH, DEFINITION AND LIMITS OF A COUNTERCULTURE
- The culture of parents. The great generational NO. The mechanics of disaffiliation. The context of the 1960s in the United States. Strategies to combat technocracy (psychedelia, hippie culture, psychology of alienation, community experiences, oriental mysticism). From Berkeley to Madison Avenue. From yippie to yuppie.
- Texts: Roszak, Diski, Hoffman, Frank, Roth, Racionero, Corazón and Sempere.
UNIT 2. COUNTERCULTURE IN SPAIN: THE GENESIS IN SEVILLE
- The role of the military bases of Morón and Rota. The crossbreeding of psychedelia and flamenco. From Diego del Gastor to Smash. A revolution on radio. The García-Pelayo engine. The Palmarian Church as a dark Counterculture. Counterculture as heresy.
- Texts: Matute, García-Pelayo, Nazario, Benítez Reyes.
UNIT 3. CONTINUITIES AND RUPTURES OF THE AMERICAN UNDERGROUND COMIX
- Pushing the limits of press freedom. Perverting traditions (sexualisation and drugging of funny animals). The Crumb case. An avian psychedelia. Moscoso and the survival of the craftsman. Descendants, affinities and negotiations with the mainstream.
- References: Contributions by Ops and Chumy Chúmez in the Cómix Undreground USA anthologies published by Fundamentos and in the pages of Triunfo.
UNIT 4. COUNTERCULTURE IN SPAIN: FROM MASKED DEVELOPMENT TO POISONING THE KIOSKS
- The Seville-Valencia-Barcelona-Madrid map. Birth of El Rrollo Enmascarado. The rapid assimilation of the Tebeos del Rrollo. An imaginary slum, quinqui and lumpen. The invasion of the ultra-bodies of the line. The dialectic between the “chunga line” and the “clear line”. El Víbora or the professionalisation of dissidence.
- Texts: Gallardo y Mediavilla, Mariscal, Max, Ceesepe.
UNIT 5. COUNTERCULTURE IN SPAIN: OBVERSE AND REVERSE OF THE HIPPIE
- Malditism and survival. From pre-hippie Ibiza to emptied-out Formentera. The hippie as a parodic archetype. The Vallejo-Nágera case. The myth of Barbet Schroeder’s “More”. The disintegration of a Dionysian utopia.
- Texts: Ribas, Malvido, Cerdà Subirachs, Rodríguez Branchart, Usón.
UNIT 6. COUNTERCULTURE IN SPAIN: THE HOUR OF DISENCHANTMENT
- Counterculture and democracy. The split of the Transition. The hour of social democratic taste. The golden mirage of the 1980s. Formal disarticulation of the Dionysian. The triumph of technocracy by other means. The journey of descent.
- Texts: Labrador, Vilarós, Parés, López Carrasco, Moix.
UNIT 7. THE CAMP AS A CASE STUDY
- Artifice, affectation, baroque and other dissident tools. Seriousness that fails. An encrypted language. A question of the gaze. Mimesis and disarticulation of hegemonic languages. From Camp to Scream Queer: dynamics, contradictions and frictions for new poetics of the monstrous body.
- Texts: Sontag, Berzosa, Nazario, Waters, Evans, Newton, Guedán, Vegas.
UNIT 8. TRASH AS TASTE ACTIVISM
- A dandyism of the irredeemable. The transcendence of error in rapture. From the passive spectator to the troll spectator. Overflows of ugliness and intensities of incorrectness. New rituals of cultural consumption. The perverse alliance with the mass media.
- Texts: Waters, Cartmell, Quesada.
UNIT 9. POST-COUNTERCULTURAL FLIRTATIONS IN MAINSTREAM CAMPS
- The new television animation as a Counterculture for children. The strengths of a bad education: from MAD magazine to “Adventure Time”. Lysergic flashbacks in a magical world of colours. From the sitcom as an engine of homogenisation to post-humour as a tool of estrangement.
- References: various contributions in the collective books Una risa nueva, Sitcom and Mantener alejado del alcance de los niños.
UNIT 10. COUNTERCULTURAL MUTATIONS AND SURVIVAL IN TIMES OF NETWORKS AND COLLAPSE
- Counterculture and Hauntology: the spell of a utopia to be fulfilled. Modes of transmission of a dispersed memory. Countercultural memory as a polyphony of voices under construction. Memes, Youtubers and Tiktokers. Accelerated consecrations, ephemeral phenomena and market niches. From fanzine to podcast. How long will we wait for the museumisation of trap?
- References: Esty Quesada, Mondo Brutto, La Felguera, Los Javis.

Bibliography

Section 1

ALIAGA, Juan Vicente (2008) Orden fálico, Madrid: Akal.

BOCCIONI, Umberto (2004) Estética y arte futuristas, Barcelona: Acantilado.

BOURRIAUD, Nicolas (2006) Estética relacional (trad. Cecilia Beceyro & Sergio Delgado), Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo.

BUTLER, Judith (2001) Mecanismos psíquicos del poder, Madrid: Cátedra.

CORTÉS, José Miguel G., Ed. (2001) Héroes caídos: Masculinidad y representación, Castelló: Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló.

DE DIEGO, Estrella (2001) No soy yo: Autobiografía, performance y los nuevos espectadores, Madrid: Siruela.

ECHEVARREN, Roberto (2007) Fuera de género: Criaturas de la invención erótica, Buenos Aires: Losada.

FERNÁNDEZ PORTA, Eloy (2008) Homo Sampler, Barcelona: Anagrama.

– (2010) €RO$, Barcelona: Anagrama.

– (2021) Las aventuras de Genitalia y Normativa, Barcelona: Anagrama.

FOSTER, Hal (2001) El retorno de lo real: La vanguardia a finales de siglo (trad. Alfredo Brotons Muñoz), Madrid: Akal.

GROYS, Boris (2005) Sobre lo nuevo, Valencia: Pre-Textos.

ILLOUZ, Eva (2007) Intimidades congeladas, Madrid: Katz.

MARTÍNEZ COLLADO, Ana (2008) Tendenci@s: perspectivas feministas en el arte actual, Murcia: CENDEAC.

HERNÁNDEZ-NAVARRO, Miguel Ángel, Ed. (2017) Contratiempos, Murcia: CENDEAC.

LEOPARDI, Giacomo (2013) Diálogo de la moda y la muerte, Madrid: Taurus.

LYOTARD, Jean-François (1998) Lo inhumano: Charlas sobre el tiempo, Manantial: Buenos Aires.

MORENO, María (1998) El fin del sexo y otras mentiras, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana.

OLIVARES, Rosa (2012) Palabra de artista: 30 entrevistas con artistas españoles (2 Vols.), Madrid: Exit Libris

PERAN, Martí, Ed. (2015) After Lansdcape: Ciutats copiades, Barcelona: Fabra i Coats Centre d’Art Contemporani.

RAMÍREZ, Juan Antonio y Jesús CARRILLO CASTILLO, Eds. (2004) Tendencias del arte, arte de tendencias a principios del siglo XXI, Madrid: Cátedra.

RUSS, Joanna (2020) Cómo acabar con la escritura de las mujeres, Madrid: Dos bigotes.

SIMMEL, Georg (2018) Filosofía de la moda, Madrid: Casimiro.

SALÓ, Montserrat (2011) Mi museo (ed. Mireia C. Saladrigues), Barcelona: Fundació Miró.

PAJAK, FRÉDÉRIC (2021) La muerte de Walter Benjamin y la jaula de Ezra Pound (Manifiesto Incierto, 3), Madrid: Errata Naturae.

PERNIOLA, Mario (2008) Del sentir, Madrid: Pre-Textos.

SPERANZA, Graciela (2018) Cronografías, Barcelona: Anagrama.

ZELIZER, Viviana (2005) The Purchase of Intimacy, Princeton: Princeton University Press.