MA Art & Politics

The central function of Art and Politics 1: Theory History Event is to offer an advanced foundation in both interpretative practices and theoretical concepts in the realms of Art & Politics as an emerging sub-field. The module provides opportunities to investigate a range of issues that pervade both Art and Politics – exploring not just theoretical ideas about art, politics and culture, but also a wide variety of artistic/political practices and strategies. The purpose of the module is to create a common intellectual, aesthetic and theoretical framework for students coming from a range of disciplines and in so doing, to consider some of the most enduring preoccupations for both Art and Politics.

Central themes, such as those of autonomy, democracy or agency are explored (amongst others) as shared areas of interest and concern for both disciplines. In addressing such subjects, the module aims to stage an encounter between the insights of political theory and events on the one hand, and those of art theory and practice on the other – in a confrontational collaboration that tests the limits and identity of both disciplines.

The dissertation is an extended piece of written work of 10,000 words on a research topic of your choice (but subject to approval). It is compulsory for all MA and MRes students who have passed all written papers and is undertaken after the Summer term (i.e. during the 'vacation' period). The dissertation comprises a critical review of the literature and/or original analysis of documentary and/or other evidence on a chosen topic within the fields of your programme. Your work for the dissertation will be supervised by a member of staff with particular expertise of interest in the area chosen for study. The dissertation counts as one full module unit.

There is nothing new to the concept that space is infused and structured according to dominant forms of power in society - be they nationalism, neo-liberalism, the state, or patriarchy - and that such articulations have corresponding representational forms in maps, charts, surveys, and censuses.

Far from being the neutral scientific endeavour it is often claimed to be, cartography has always tended to reinforce and replicate dominant spatial logics, erasing indigenous claims to land, ostracising minorities from the political landscape, and setting racial, gender and class hierarchies (quite literally) in stone, brick and asphalt. Increasingly, however, we are seeing a growing number of both artists and social movements coming to an awareness that our representations of space carry with them an intendant politics. Intent on redressing this imbalance, counter-mapping is the still somewhat speculative practice of harnessing dominant representational strategies in an effort to invert, subvert, and make clear what has been erased in an effort to seek political change.

From feminist re-mappings of the city according to safe and dangerous places, to indigenous narratives of ancestral wanderings; from students co-opting google maps to avoid police tactics of ‘kettling’, to artist Janet Cardiff’s memory walks; from local anarchist groups revealing locations of CCTV cameras in Camberwell Green, to W.G. Sebald’s literary re-mapping of East Anglia; this module not only studies emerging forms of counter-mapping, but encourages students to engage in their own practice of re-mapping, re-walking, and re-appropriating the cityscape.

Emergency pedagogies/group plans and prototypes

This is a module that flexibly adapts to the changing times. And we are living in such turbulent times. Each moment now seems to produce a state of the exception, that is, a moment when the ordinary rules that govern society are suspended in order to deal with an emergency.
In the last 20 years, viral infections, the war on terror, the environmental crisis, artificial intelligence and a fear of the refugee have been just some of the major eruptions occasioning a suspension of certain rights.

We need to learn to adapt to these changing times and draw on our collaborative spirit to do so. We need to develop practices that share our experiences, passions knowledge, and intellectual interests productively with others. Designing politics offers the space to do this - to think and work collaboratively and it is this that sits at the centre of this module’s pedagogy.
This practice-based collaborative work is brought together under the title Emergency pedagogies/group plans and prototypes. The aim is to collaboratively produce plans and prototypes of ideas that speak to this moment as potentialities that can be realised in the future. Students will collaborate in small groups as well as with their teachers and, depending on the projects and circumstances, with other contributors as and when they are required
This is all designed to support groups with developing fully planned, costed and potentially realisable projects. This will be done through:

• tutorials that help develop projects
• lectures and seminars on themes and interests arising out of projects
• Grant application writing workshop that moves them towards potentially realisable projects and
• a feedback panel that addresses each group project from a conceptual, material and practical realisable position

The growing prevalence of emergencies – through war, forced migration, climate change, environmental destruction, viral infection – as near everyday occurrences require us to engage with and learn from these events, not as extraordinary and aberrant, not as chaotic and out of control (until they are somehow fixed and returned to normal, made whole and improved on), but as spaces of improvisation, ingenuity, creativity and ultimately survival. We need to learn from these events as part of the pedagogical work we engage in for our future survival.

Within this context, the Material Encounters module focuses on identifying and developing a students’ individual practice through exploring how your interests, research and intuitions speak to a particular form, how and where this form belongs in the world and how it speaks to our current contemporaneity through the creation of plans and prototypes of ideas as potentialities that can be realised in the future. This work will be done through group seminars and individual tutorials that address each individual practice from a conceptual, material and practical-realisable position.

This module seeks to introduce the main approaches, methods and debates in the emerging sub-discipline of comparative political thought. It explores central intellectual discussions over the nature of both ‘comparison’ and ‘thought’, whilst striving to develop an original and innovative approach to the field, moving towards a truly ‘global’ political thought. The module is designed for students who are interested in deepening their understanding of relevant non-Western canons and assess key areas of tension with Western political and legal thinking.

The first part of the module provides an introduction to key methodological and theoretical approaches to comparative political thought. This will be done by exploring relevant debates in this newly established discipline (e.g., Mignolo, Isin, Santos, etc.). We will then pursue a specialist insight in the non-West, looking at a variety of intellectual/philosophical canons. This part of the course highlights the practical relevance of non-Western texts and traditions for present-day issues and contemporary struggles across the globe, whilst addressing the emergence of new political imaginaries and conceptual tools that challenge conventional concepts in international law and politics.

The growing prevalence of emergencies – through war, forced migration, climate change, environmental destruction, viral infection – as near everyday occurrences require us to engage with and learn from these events, not as extraordinary and aberrant, not as chaotic and out of control (until they are somehow fixed and returned to normal, made whole and improved on), but as spaces of improvisation, ingenuity, creativity and ultimately survival. We need to learn from these events as part of the pedagogical work we engage in for our future survival.

Within this context, the Material Encounters module focuses on identifying and developing a students’ individual practice through exploring how your interests, research and intuitions speak to a particular form, how and where this form belongs in the world and how it speaks to our current contemporaneity through the creation of plans and prototypes of ideas as potentialities that can be realised in the future. This work will be done through group seminars and individual tutorials that address each individual practice from a conceptual, material and practical-realisable position.

This module will provide a critical grounding in contemporary debates around Islam and the political as well as delineate the plural and agonistic nature of Muslim political ideologies and practices over the course of the last century. Is Islam an inherently political religion as many Orientalists have contended? Why has this question been repeatedly posed through to the present? Is there such a thing as a “Muslim politics”? How has Muslim political activism found itself Othered and stigmatised in recent decades and why has such activism provoked questions over the legitimacy of political engagement by Muslims? How have Muslims been historically racialised and what connections can be drawn between the legacy of Orientalism, colonial racisms and contemporary Islamophobia? Furthermore, how might we complicate mainstream understandings of “fundamentalism” and “Islamic law” and the relationship between Muslim political practices, liberal citizenship, secularism, resistance and the impact of Western colonialism and/or imperialism in the Islamicate world?

Islam, Revolution & Empire will also introduce students to manifold contemporary political discourses and practices in the Islamicate world – from the seemingly interminable debate over Islamic feminism, women’s agency and the veil, to anti-colonial Islam(s), Islamic liberation theology and black internationalism, Kurdish anarchism and democratic confederalism and Arab and Iranian socialisms. The module aims to help students rethink the relationship between “Islam” and the political, as well as how Islam has been marshalled as a political category, and found itself challenged and critiqued for disparate ends, and thereby nuance their understanding of the relationship between politics, revolution and religion in the “Muslim world” and the imperial metropole itself. The module will problematize such categories as “fundamentalism”, “political Islam”, “extremist versus moderate”, the figure of “the radical”, and a wider lexicon which has proliferated in the wake of September 11, 2001 and the inauguration of the “War on Terror”; a lexicon and hegemonic “common sense” that continues to dominate politicians and media discussions of Muslims and politics at both home and the broader Islamicate world.

There is nothing new to the concept that space is infused and structured according to dominant forms of power in society - be they nationalism, neo-liberalism, the state, or patriarchy - and that such articulations have corresponding representational forms in maps, charts, surveys, and censuses.

Far from being the neutral scientific endeavour it is often claimed to be, cartography has always tended to reinforce and replicate dominant spatial logics, erasing indigenous claims to land, ostracising minorities from the political landscape, and setting racial, gender and class hierarchies (quite literally) in stone, brick and asphalt. Increasingly, however, we are seeing a growing number of both artists and social movements coming to an awareness that our representations of space carry with them an intendant politics. Intent on redressing this imbalance, counter-mapping is the still somewhat speculative practice of harnessing dominant representational strategies in an effort to invert, subvert, and make clear what has been erased in an effort to seek political change.

From feminist re-mappings of the city according to safe and dangerous places, to indigenous narratives of ancestral wanderings; from students co-opting google maps to avoid police tactics of ‘kettling’, to artist Janet Cardiff’s memory walks; from local anarchist groups revealing locations of CCTV cameras in Camberwell Green, to W.G. Sebald’s literary re-mapping of East Anglia; this module not only studies emerging forms of counter-mapping, but encourages students to engage in their own practice of re-mapping, re-walking, and re-appropriating the cityscape.

The central goal of this module is to examine and reflect upon the nature, function and operation of art and popular culture in times of war and conflict. Focusing largely on contemporary and 20th century visual production, the module draws on a selection of artworks and visual examples to critically address the following key questions:

1. What is the role of the artist/artwork in times of war and crisis?
2. Can war and terror be thought of as ‘aesthetic’ or even ‘sublime’?
3. What political, cultural and moral implications are at stake in the representation and mediation of suffering?
4. ‘War art’ or ‘war porn’?
5. What is the nature of the relationship between art, terror and terrorism?
6. What role do art and images play in the relay of historical violence and in a broader politics of memory?
7. Can the experience of pain be woven into the fabric of the image?
8. What do images have to do, if anything with bare life?
9. How is the status of the ‘real’ affected by its documentation?
10. How do art, images and monuments of war and conflict, shape as well as preserve memories of war and conflict?

Looking at key contemporary and ‘historical’ artworks and events, this module cuts across historical trajectories in order to examine both the representation of violence and the violence of representation. It investigates the various roles of art and visual culture in relation to the two World Wars, the Cold War, the cultural and ideological battles of the 1960s and 70s, the ‘armchair’ wars, the so-called ‘war on terror’ and many other conflicts in recent years. Using Agamben, Baudrillard, Virilio, Butler and others, it considers the impact of military surveillance techniques on culture, both in terms of art practices and more broadly, as experienced in everyday culture. It reflects on artists’ enduring fascination with war and terror and shows how art can be understood as a form of politics, knowledge and experience.

This module focuses on how societies emerging from different types of conflict (such as war, genocide, ethnic violence and grave human rights abuses) engage in the process of coming to terms with their past. It examines official mechanisms of ‘transitional justice’ such as trials and truth commissions, as well as cultural forms of remembrance and local community practices.

By exploring the complex relationship between conflict, memory and justice in various cross-cultural settings, it seeks to provide an understanding of the ways in which such processes can promote or hinder reconciliation and the rebuilding of social and inter-communal ties.

The module will also assess the role of external factors (particularly through the creation of international war crimes tribunals) in terms of how they have affected such internal processes of facing the past. Various case studies, including Germany, Japan, Serbia, South Africa, and Rwanda will inform the theoretical discussions and provide a comparative perspective. 

This module aims to raise questions about whether the concepts and categories through which we usually study the ’international' or ’global' are adequate to the task. It critically examines categories of the social sciences and humanities that are usually simply presupposed and ’applied', and which, despite their Western or European origins, are assumed to be ’universal'. It does this by closely examining some of the most important theoretical writings of the post-WWII period, focusing upon books and debates which had repercussions far beyond their immediate disciplinary boundaries, including books by Kuhn, MacIntyre, Foucault, Said, and others.

Students explore the claim(s) that far from being objective and universal, our knowledge is shaped by culture, history and politics. In seminars we ask, can different ’conceptual schemes', ’paradigms' or ’traditions' be compared to see which one is better, or are they incommensurable? Do theories and explanations triumph over rival theories because they are ’better'- or for other reasons? Does knowledge serve to unmask power, or is it always caught up with and complicit with power?

This module requires students not simply to advance their knowledge of politics, but to explore the politics of knowledge, and to do so, in particular, by enquiring into whether the categories and concepts of the social sciences are genuinely  international and universal, or merely modern/Western and parochial.

This module combines a variety of approaches from history, sociology, and political economy in the study of the global political economy. Its focus will be on the connection between global economic integration and domestic socio-economic transformation in the making of the contemporary world order. Further, we will examine how theories have shaped policies in the context of increasing integration of the global economy.

In the first segment of the module, we will examine some of the major scholarly contributions to political and economic theory and thought. We will further develop an interdisciplinary theoretical framework incorporating political economy and world history that will greatly aid us in the subsequent analysis of the global political economy.

The second segment of the module will trace the historical development, structure, and function of the global political economy. The theoretical framework will include a brief introduction to the national income accounting and the balance of payments, the determination of exchange rates, and different exchange rate regimes. Further, we will employ this theory to better understand the historical evolution of the International Monetary System and the role of the International Financial Institutions in the global political economy.

The last segment of the module examines the origins and nature of global trade integration with a particular emphasis on the experience of developing countries in the global economy. Key topics include the debate on trade and development, trade liberalisation, the structure and function of the International Trading System, trade policies and development strategies, political economy of Foreign Direct Investment and the impact of Transnational Corporations.

This module combines a variety of approaches from history, sociology, economics, and political economy in the study of the political economy of the United States (US), and its unique position in the world economy. While tracing the historical development of the US in the world economy, the module examines major events and forces that have shaped the global political economy from the late 19th century to the present day. Particular attention will be paid to the long-term development trends of the US/world economy, the growth of institutions and markets, industrialization/deindustrialization, the internationalization of production and finance, the financialization of the US economy, and the impact of governmental economic policies. In this context, we will discuss the historical roots of US hegemony and its structural impact on the global economy. Finally, we will try to reach some general conclusions about the current condition and prospects for the US position in the world economy.

This MA level module explores the contemporary politics of human rights. Drawing on political philosophy, legal theory and international relations approaches, the module will examine the complex issues raised by human rights, and some of the difficulties and challenges in applying human rights in the contemporary world – the violence and human rights violations committed by state and non-state actors, wars and conflicts around the world, and the current global refugee crisis. It will also explore some of the important critiques of human rights from Marxist and postcolonial perspectives.

Students will be introduced to the major theoretical frameworks for understanding state compliance with human rights obligations using both historical and comparative approaches to the topic. We will focus on particular case examples and general cross-national comparisons in the effort to understand why states commit violations.

The module will explore the influence of political and economic conditions such as regime type, conflict, economic development in the protection or violation of human rights, the impact of human agency and decisions and the role of states, international legal instruments and NGOs in the promotion of human rights. Finally, it will examine questions of intervention, the development of accountability mechanisms and the management of the blame for human rights violations. 

The workings of power, authority and freedom have implications as much for our subjective, or psychic, organisation as they do for institutions and programmes of government. Psychoanalytic theory looks to the unconscious motivations of human behaviour and the strange, often perverse effects these can have on social relations. Ideas of leadership, cultural identity or personal choice, for example, involve identifications that often distort one’s sense of self and delimit its autonomy. Secret desires for subjugation to the powerful or the willful denial of suffering (in oneself or in others) are central themes of psychoanalysis. 

‘Psychopolitics’ thus comprises the fantasies, obsessions, obscene desires and precarious repressions that structure political reality and supply it objects for intimate investment. This module explores how we study politics from a psychoanalytical perspective. It focuses primarily on key texts by Freud and Lacan – as well as by other thinkers – to develop a vocabulary of psychopolitical analysis to apply to the study of contemporary events.

This module introduces you to the main theoretical perspectives that inform the discipline of International Relations. While the main focus is on contemporary theoretical trends and developments, a guiding rationale is that current international theory emerges out of and in an ongoing critical relationship with the discipline’s theoretical heritage that reaches back to at least the beginning of the twentieth century. A further claim explored in the module is that IR theory exists in a dialectic with contemporary processes, and practices of world politics, which it both reflects and influences. Thus, the module encourages you to think critically about how theories might help us to explain and understand key themes and events, both historical and contemporary, that constitute the subject matter of the discipline of International Relations, broadly understood.

The module falls loosely into two halves. The first, which addresses the intellectual history of IR theory identifies the uniqueness of IR as a distinct discipline; introduces three of the dominant intellectual traditions: Realism, Liberalism and the theory of International Society and considers the status of IR as a political science. The second half engages with some of the most significant theories challenging mainstream traditions since the end of the Cold War. Often identified as ‘critical’, these theories - Constructivist, Marxist, Feminist, Poststructural and Postcolonial - are evaluated for their ability to critique the epistemological, ontological and methodological assumptions of mainstream theories and to present coherent alternative theories of IR.

This course explores a series of key contemporary issues of environment and development. We start by examining what it means to say we are living in the age of the ‘Anthropocene’. We then examine different perspectives for thinking about the environment in political economy terms of who wins, who loses, how and why. We then take this historical and conceptual grounding to the world, exploring the environmental politics of a range of key issues energy, climate change, energy food, water, waste and the uneven impacts of global environmental decay.

This module explores the political economy of money, debt and finance in the contemporary world. It fosters an understanding of finance as a contested site of social struggles and power that shapes capitalist relations and policymaker actions. It examines key theoretical debates on the place of finance and its relation to the real economy. It then takes these debates and applies them across different empirical areas: housing, personal debt, corporate governance, environmental finance, and shadow banking.

Economic policy and regulation are shaped by experts and cultures of expertise. This has been true at an international level for over a century, never more so than with the design of the Bretton Woods system of international monetary regulation. Today, the question of technocratic government in contexts such as the European Union is a divisive and urgent one. This module turns critical, empirical and theoretical attention on the role of experts in economies, in national, international and neo-colonial contexts. It combines history of economics and philosophy with political sociology of institutions and policy, to consider how knowledge and expertise are crucial to the governance, regulation and representation of economic activity and economic space.

Topics to be addressed include: the political "boundary work" of economics as a discipline, and its consequences; the neo-colonial power of economists in the global political economy; neoliberal expertise and technocracy; the politics of international measures and standards; and resistance to economic expertise and populism.

Students will be introduced to some key ideas on the politics of knowledge from Marion Fourcade, Anne-Marie Djelic, Michel Foucault, Philip Mirowski, Timothy Mitchell, Michel Callon, and Steven Shapin, among others.

This module will provide a critical grounding in contemporary debates around Islam and the political as well as delineate the plural and agonistic nature of Muslim political ideologies and practices over the course of the last century. Is Islam an inherently political religion as many Orientalists have contended? Why has this question been repeatedly posed through to the present? Is there such a thing as a “Muslim politics”? How has Muslim political activism found itself Othered and stigmatised in recent decades and why has such activism provoked questions over the legitimacy of political engagement by Muslims? How have Muslims been historically racialised and what connections can be drawn between the legacy of Orientalism, colonial racisms and contemporary Islamophobia? Furthermore, how might we complicate mainstream understandings of “fundamentalism” and “Islamic law” and the relationship between Muslim political practices, liberal citizenship, secularism, resistance and the impact of Western colonialism and/or imperialism in the Islamicate world?

Islam, Revolution & Empire will also introduce students to manifold contemporary political discourses and practices in the Islamicate world – from the seemingly interminable debate over Islamic feminism, women’s agency and the veil, to anti-colonial Islam(s), Islamic liberation theology and black internationalism, Kurdish anarchism and democratic confederalism and Arab and Iranian socialisms. The module aims to help students rethink the relationship between “Islam” and the political, as well as how Islam has been marshalled as a political category, and found itself challenged and critiqued for disparate ends, and thereby nuance their understanding of the relationship between politics, revolution and religion in the “Muslim world” and the imperial metropole itself. The module will problematize such categories as “fundamentalism”, “political Islam”, “extremist versus moderate”, the figure of “the radical”, and a wider lexicon which has proliferated in the wake of September 11, 2001 and the inauguration of the “War on Terror”; a lexicon and hegemonic “common sense” that continues to dominate politicians and media discussions of Muslims and politics at both home and the broader Islamicate world.