Contemporary Critical Issues
Sleeper Cells: Art and Terrorism

Winter Quarter – 2007
Th 3:30p - 6:20p
Meeting Room: VAF 366

Cell Leader: Ricardo Dominguez
Contact: rrdominguez@ucsd.edu

"Truth is two cents a copy, dynamite is forty cents a pound.  Buy them both, read one, use the other," the anarchist paper Truth declared in the 1890s.

"Terrorism is a part of the dark side of globalization. However sadly, it is part of the doing business in the world – business we as Americans are not going to stop doing."
- Secretary of State Colin Powell

"They {the terrorists} have even - and this is the height of cunning - used the banality of American everyday life as cover and camouflage.  Sleeping in their suburbs, reading and studying with their families, before activating themselves suddenly like time bombs.  The faultless mastery of this clandestine style of operation is almost as terrorist(ic) as the spectacular act of September 11, since it casts suspicion on any and every individual."
-Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism

"Sleeper Awakens." - Dune

The call of art to some degree since modernism has been to awaken those who have been culturally asleep with shapes and actions that shock them into new states of awareness. To what degree can the question of the *radical* as an aesthetic trajectory be linked to the history of terrorism pre- and post-9/11 as its shadow, its Cassandra, its counter-power – art as a *sleeper cell* against the *War Against Terrorism.* We will drift across contemporary/post-contemporary theory, art gestures and popular culture that intersects between sleeper cells and awaken agents.

Grading Policies
 Final Grade Evaluation:
 25% Lead Discussion (groups will be selected and in charge of leading
 discussions on the week’s reading)
 25% One 20 Minute Presentation – please schedule by Feb. 15th, 2007.
 25% Attendance and Participation
 25% Final Exam - 10 page essay (MLA Style)

Readings: 50% of the reading will be on-line the rest will be available to order online from amazon.com or your favorite book retailer.
Texts for Class (Some of you probably already have them).

Fear of Small Numbers   by Arjun Appadurai
Welcome to the Desert of the Real   by Slavoj Zizek
The Spirit of Terrorism   by Jean Baudrillard
Torture Taxi   by Trevor Paglen

http://www.amazon.com
Or At
http://www.powells.com

Cell Swicki
http://terroristic-swicki.eurekster.com/

Class Schedule

WEEK 1: Jan. 11th - Introduction
(Watch)*Invasion of the Body Snatchers*
Burnt Coal: http://www.umass.edu/fac/hampden/shows/rapidresponse/other/coal.mov
Cell leader in class

WEEK 2 : Jan. 18th - - Giving Terror
(Read) The Fate of Art in the Age of Terrorism by Boris Groys,

The Gift of Terror:  Suicide-Terrorism as Potlach by Ross Birrell,

A Note on Gerhard Richter's "October 18, 1977" by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh
(http://www.jstor.org/view/01622870/ap030046/03a00090/0 )

(Watch in class) In the name of God: Scenes from the extreme
http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeyesunday/feature_191003.html
http://chomskytorrents.org/?Action=ReorderSearch&Order=2

WEEK 3 : Jan. 25th - Systems of Power

(Read) Zones of Indistinction. Security, Terror, and Bare Life. Bülent Diken

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lancs.ac.uk%2Ffss%2Fsociology%2Fpapers%2Fdiken-laustsen-zones-of-indistinction.pdf&ei=E6KiRaa6L6WCgwOVwJH8Ag&usg=__8Xnz8hLMq0-tgeGJyIZEx9TFzxU=&sig2=4jMNAAmubEiiutQnUULEKA

(Watch) Manchurian Candidate

(Watch) State of Siege , Costa Garvas

WEEK 4 : Feb. 1 - InfoWars

(Read) Tell Us What's Going to Happen Information Feeds to the War on Terror by Samuel Nunn

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=518

(Watch) Journeys From Berlin, 1971 Yvonne Rainer

(Click PDF) Beyond al-Qaeda Part 1, The Global Jihadist Movement http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG429/

WEEK 5: Feb. 8th - The Dark Side of Globalization

(Read) Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger by Arjun Appadurai

(Watch) Brazil (1985)

(Click)http://www.morphizm.com/politix/girard911.html

(Click) universite tangent The System- Global Laboratory, 2005, text and map http://ut.yt.t0.or.at/site/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=287&Itemid=117&pop=1&page=0

WEEK 6 : Feb. 15th - We are terrorists, we are terrorized – Jordan Crandall

(Read) The Spirit of Terrorism by Jean Baudrillard and excerpt from Portents of the Real by Susan Willis (will distribute PDF)

(Watch) Showtime’s Sleeper Cell (from Season 1)

(Watch) Battlestar Galatica (Season 3 and 4 )

(Listen) Open source with Christopher Lydon, episode “Fear Factor” http://www.radioopensource.org/fear-factor/

(Click) global security alliance
http://www.global-security-alliance.com

(Click) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_agent

WEEK 7 : Feb. 22nd - Fundamentals - Capitalism & Militant Islam

(Read) Welcome to the Desert of the Real by Slavoj Zizek
(Click & Read)

Jalal Toufic: 'Âshûrâ'; or, Torturous Memory as a Condition of Possibility of an Unconditional Promise

http://underfire.eyebeam.org/?q=node/540

(Watch) Videodrome (1983)

(Click) Religion and Violence: A Bibliography
http://cpn.nd.edu/religionandviolenceabibliography.htm
Cell leader in class

WEEK 8 : March 1 - Imaging/Imagining Terror

(Read) excerpts from Art in the Age of Terrorism (will distribute PDF)

(Watch homework) The Power of Nightmares
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
http://www.terrortracker.co.uk/
(Watch in class) Dial H-i-s-t-o-r-y

(Click) http://www.sinister-network.com/

WEEK 9 : March, 8th - Cartographies of the Terrorism Enterprise

(Read) Torture Taxi by Trevor Paglen (or excerpt) and Terrorism and Just War - Michael Walzer (can make pdf)

 (Click)  http://www.tkb.org/ and make some graphs

(Watch) Fight Club (1999)

WEEK 10 : March, 15th

Student presentations

(Watch) Weather Underground

Other Recommendations:

Books
Art and Fear by Paul Virilio
Art In the Age of Terrorism Edited by Graham Coulter-Smith
Thinking Past Terror by Susan Buck-Morass
The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Body Horror: photojournalism, catastrophe and war by John Taylor
Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam by Jason Burke
Epic Encounters : Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945 by Melani McAlister

The Culture of Exception Sociology Facing the Camp by Bulent Diken

Terrorism and the Media by David L. Paletz and Alex P. Schmid
The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition) by National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World by Benjamin Barber

Flims
Loose Change http://loosechange911.com/
Black Sunday
Battlestar Galactica (Sci-fi Channel)
24
Rambo 3
Dune
After 9/11 http://www.watsoninstitute.org/infopeace/after911/
Minority Report

Links