Winter 2012

Room: MANDE 228

Wednesday 12:30pm - 3:20 p.m

Email: rrdominguez@ucsd.edu

Office Hours: Wed. 11pm to Noon (CAL IT2/Atkinson Hall 2nd fl - 2501)

Class Description:

 Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD) as a theory will be compared with the multiple forms of ECD practice that have emerged since the early 1990's. We will investigate how ECD intersects with earlier definitions of civil disobedience (CD) by Henry David Thoreau to Ghandi. The class will also examine the trajectories of tactical media, digital zapatismo, hacktivism, cyberwar and social netwar that arose at the same time as ECD. Core questions for the class will be: is ECD a useful tactic for contemporary activism and if so how and when; and, to what degree have post 9/11 politics effected the practice of ECD. What new tactics and strategies have emerged with social networking and distributed video models. The readings and examples of ECD practice will only be on-line. Among the E-books on ECD that we will read sections from: The Electronic Disturbance and Electronic Civil Disobedience by Critical Art Ensemble; also, Hackitivism: network_art_activism by Electronic Disturbance Theater; and The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico by David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla, as well as current hacktivist practices by Anonymous. The class will also explore and develop an ECD performance in order to access and evaluate the arcs between theory and practice.