MA Art & Politics

The central function of Art and Politics 1: Theory and History is to offer you an advanced foundation in both interpretative practices and theoretical concepts in the realms of Art & Politics as an emerging sub-field.You'll have 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 Politics Master's Dissertation is an extended piece of written work of 10,000 words on a research topic of your choice (subject to approval).

It is compulsory for all MA students who have passed all written papers and is undertaken after the summer term. 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 or 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.

The module will consist of weekly 2hr seminars devoted to both the study of emerging trends in counter-mapping as a practice, as well as to practical workshops and site visits determined each year by the module convenor based on student interests and types of projects undertaken. Topics covered will include:

• Introduction to the politics of space and mapping
• Colonial cartographies / indigenous resistances
• Walking as critical practice
• Feminist and Queer reappraisals of space Artistic interventions using cartography

Through practice-based group activity and pre-arranged project work, you'll create work that engages with themes agreed to between your peers and tutors and arrived at through course discussion, interaction, site visits and through harnessing and channeling the creativity, originality and imagination of the participants themselves.

In a set of site-specific practices that avoid overt engagement with either art or politics in the traditional sense (where art is treated as a set of techniques and politics is treated as self evident) you'll be invited into new mental spaces that aim to engage them in novel and original site specific projects that change each year. Combining site-specific work with related theoretical reading the module will offer you an opportunity to engage with politics and art as a way of seeing the world differently. These project-based projects offer spaces where ideas and proposals can be put into a practice based environment that leads to a set of material outcomes enabling students to reflect upon how and where a public or audience encounters such work.

Through practice-based activity and process-led project work, you'll create work that engages with themes agreed on between the students and the tutors and arrived at through group seminar discussion, workshops and interaction with materials, site visits and harnessing and channelling the creativity, originality and imagination of the participants themselves.

In a set of site-specific practices that avoid overt engagement with either art or politics in the traditional sense (where art is treated as a set of techniques and politics is treated as self-evident), you'll be invited into new mental spaces that aim to engage them in novel and original projects that change each year. Combining site-specific work with related workshops and theoretical reading, the module allows you to engage with politics and art as a way of seeing the world differently. This project-based work offers students spaces where ideas and proposals can be put into a practice-based environment that leads to a set of material outcomes enabling students to reflect upon how and where a public or audience encounters such work.

This module will introduce you to the main approaches, methods and debates in the emerging sub-discipline of comparative political thought. You'll explore 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 will give you an introduction to key methodological and theoretical approaches to comparative political thought. You'll examine relevant debates in this newly established discipline (e.g., Mignolo, Isin, Santos, etc.). You'' 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.

Through practice-based activity and process-led project work, you'll create work that engages with themes agreed on between the students and the tutors and arrived at through group seminar discussion, workshops and interaction with materials, site visits and harnessing and channelling the creativity, originality and imagination of the participants themselves.

In a set of site-specific practices that avoid overt engagement with either art or politics in the traditional sense (where art is treated as a set of techniques and politics is treated as self-evident), you'll be invited into new mental spaces that aim to engage them in novel and original projects that change each year. Combining site-specific work with related workshops and theoretical reading, the module allows you to engage with politics and art as a way of seeing the world differently. This project-based work offers students spaces where ideas and proposals can be put into a practice-based environment that leads to a set of material outcomes enabling students to reflect upon how and where a public or audience encounters such work.

This module will give you 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 you 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 you 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 problematise 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.  

The central goal of this module is to allow you 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, you'll draw 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. You'll investigate 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, you'll consider the impact of military surveillance techniques on culture, both in terms of art practices and more broadly, as experienced in everyday culture. You'll reflect on artists’ enduring fascination with war and terror and shows how art can be understood as a form of politics, knowledge and experience.

In this module, you'll explore 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. You'll examine 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, you'll gain 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 seek knowledge of the world are adequate to the task. You'll critically examine 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'.

You'll closely examine 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.

You'll 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? The module additionally juxtaposes these questions to texts and debates, mostly issuing from the Global South, that develop radically different approaches to knowledge and self-consciously address questions regarding the politics of knowledge 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. You'll focus on the connection between global economic integration and domestic socio-economic transformation in the making of the contemporary world order. Further, you'll explore how theories have shaped policies in the context of increasing integration of the global economy.

In the first segment of the module, you'll be introduced to some of the major scholarly contributions to political and economic theory and thought. You'll 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. You'll 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
• The political economy of Foreign Direct Investment
• The impact of Transnational Corporations.

In this module, you'll combine 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, you'll examine major events and forces that have shaped the global political economy from the late 19th century to the present day. You'll pay particular attention to :

• The long-term development trends of the US/world economy
• The growth of institutions and markets
• Industrialisation/deindustrialisation
• The internationalisation of production and finance
• The financialisation of the US economy
• The impact of governmental economic policies.

In this context, you'll discuss the historical roots of US hegemony and its structural impact on the global economy. Finally, you'll try to reach some general conclusions about the current condition and prospects for the US position in the world economy.

In this module, you'll explore the politics of human rights and the challenges of securing rights in the contemporary context. You'll engage critically with theory, drawing on political philosophy, legal theory and international relations approaches to defining and critiquing human rights. You'll also focus on case studies, looking in depth at key contemporary human rights struggles and issues.

You'll begin with an introduction to the state of the debate on human rights politics, then examine the major theories and political concepts underpinning modern understandings of human rights and the political and legal institutions established to promote and protect human rights. You'll also consider the role of human rights actors, including transnational advocacy networks, social movements and NGOs, analysing their approaches and methods. You'll explore intersections between human rights, and the politics of humanitarianism and development where relevant, examining the spectrum of human rights violations and contestations, ranging from civil and political, to social and economic rights.

The module employs a problem-based approach, involving participants in identifying and analysing critical human rights problems through individual research and interactions with practitioners. Students will each produce a research-based essay, which will be developed in stages and with supervision, including through a formative presentation. The module is designed to develop knowledge and understanding of human rights as concept, law and practice and to evaluate the significance and potential of human rights in the context of contemporary politics.

Politics is an activity that regularly draws upon, and seeks to shape, subjective motivations and emotional dispositions. Psychoanalysis encourages us to understand these in terms of unconscious fantasies, repressed memories, and as unresolved psychic tensions that give rise to perverse, violent or inexplicable behaviours and obsessions. States, political elites, and movements address such tensions in numerous ways, to stir public feelings and to incite support.

In this module, you'll examine how psychoanalytic theory can contribute to the analysis of politics, particularly of the way public language and memory express desires for power, subjugation, or even reparation. You'll focus primarily on the texts of Freud, Klein and Lacan to develop analytical insights to understand contemporary events. 

This module will introduce 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 until at least the beginning of the twentieth century.

You'll explore the claim that IR theory exists in a dialectic with contemporary processes, and practices of world politics, which it both reflects and influences. You'll be encouraged 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 the 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 i) critique the epistemological, ontological and methodological assumptions of mainstream theories and ii) to present coherent alternative theories of International Relations.

In this module, you'll explore a series of key contemporary issues of environment and development. You'll examine what it means to say we are living in the age of the ‘Anthropocene’. You'll then consider different perspectives for thinking about the environment in political economy terms of who wins, who loses, how and why.

Finally, you'll take this historical and conceptual grounding to the world, exploring the environmental politics of a range of key issues energy, climate change, food, water, waste and the uneven impacts of global environmental decay.

In this module, you'll explore the political economy of money, debt and finance in the contemporary world. You'll gain an understanding of finance as a contested site of social struggles and power that shapes capitalist relations and policymaker actions. You'll examine key theoretical debates on the place of finance and its relation to the real economy. You'll then takes these debates and applies them across different empirical areas:

• Housing
• Personal debt
• Corporate governance
• Environmental finance
• 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. In this module, you'll pay critical, empirical and theoretical attention on the role of experts in economies, in national, international and neo-colonial contexts. You'll combine history of economics and philosophy of economics 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
• Resistance to economic expertise and populism.

You'll 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, Steven Shapin and others.