Moodle@Warwick

Photography is ubiquitous. Advertising, the internet and social media depend upon it. With this come worries about image-manipulation and so-called “fake news.” Prior to the worries provoked by digital imaging, photography was generally taken to be a reliable source of knowledge about the world: assuming that images have not been digitally manipulated or misleadingly staged, we have reason to believe what we see in forensic, scientific and medical photographs, if not advertising or propaganda—certainly by comparison to what we see in hand-made images. We rely on crime scene photographs for a reason. Call this photography’s (relative) “epistemic advantage:” It depends on the intuition that machine-generated images are free from certain kinds of unreliability (selective attention, false beliefs, etc) that human beings suffer from. 

But photography is also taken to be aesthetically rewarding: it is widely collected and exhibited in museums, and we appreciate different photographer’s styles or oeuvres for different reasons—not least because different photographers and different schools of photography depict the world in very different ways, focusing on different subject matters, and stressing some features of the scene while suppressing others. We appreciate art in general for these kinds of reasons, and photography is no different in this regard. Call this photography’s “aesthetic capacity.” But note that such capacities are precisely what photography’s “epistemic advantage” depends on bypassing—by providing an ostensibly objective, or “belief-independent” recording of the world.  

So it looks as if the reasoning, and underlying intuitions, behind attributing epistemic and aesthetic capacities to photography conflict. If so, both cannot be true and one will need to be surrendered. This has generated debate between “orthodox” and “new theorists” of photography over the past decade. Orthodox theorists foreground photography’s epistemic capacities; new theorists stress its aesthetic capacities. Spoiler: I’m a new theorist, of sorts. One reason for being a new theorist is that it enables us to take the intentions, beliefs and other mental states of photographers seriously, and this opens up the possibility of using photography for various artistic, ethical and political purposes—in addition to its well documented scientific, medical and forensic uses—some of which we will look at on this course. The challenge for new theorists will be how to account in turn for photography’s epistemic capacities in manner consistent their claims for its aesthetic capacities.

The aim of this seminar is to provide a way into Deleuze’s magnum opus, Difference and Repetition (1968), through a close reading of its third chapter (“The Image of Thought”).  As a way of approaching that complex chapter, however, and introducing some of Deleuze’s key concepts, we’ll begin by reading a number of shorter texts, from his early review of Jean Hyppolite’s Logique et existence to his studies on Bergson, Nietzsche, Kant, and Proust.  

Students will be expected to give presentations of selected passages and reports on previous seminars.  

A 5,000 words essay will be due.  See the departmental website for the schedule of submission deadlines.

Why study EU policy-making? How has the EU developed, and how has its development been theorized? What are the main characterisations of the EU as a system? What are the different perspectives on the EU’s legitimacy and the existence or not of a ‘democratic deficit’?

Reading

Basic text on the EU

Kenealy, D. et al (2022) The European Union: how does it work? Oxford, chs 1-3, 5

Theoretical reflections on the EU

Marks, G., Hooghe, L., & Blank, K. (1996). European integration from the 1980s: State‐centric v. multi‐level governance. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 34(3), 341-378

Laffan, B., O’Donnell, R. and Smith, M. (1999) Experimental Union: Rethinking Integration, Routledge, chapter 1

Fabbrini, S. & Puetter, U. (2016). Integration without supranationalisation: studying the lead roles of the European Council and the Council in post-Lisbon EU politics, Journal of European Integration, 38(5), 481–495, https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2016.1178254

The EU and the world

Bradford, A. (2012)The Brussels Effect, https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/271/

The EU, democracy and legitimacy

Kenealy, D. et al (2022) The European Union: how does it work? Oxford, ch 6

Kassim, H. (2007) ‘The Institutions of the European Union’ in C. Hay & A. Menon (eds), European Politics,Oxford University Press, pp. 168-99 [old, but has useful overview of diagnoses of the ‘democratic deficit’]

Scharpf, F.W. (1999) Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? Oxford UP [for reference to ‘output legitimacy’].

SEMINAR: INTRODUCTION

This is a timely and highly relevant module that will give students the necessary tools to produce well-informed, evidence-based analyses of energy policies, the political thinking behind them, and evaluations of how policies relate to energy system change. Students will develop abilities to engage with and critically evaluate current political solutions to energy issues, including the need for emissions reduction, and to (re-)imagine alternative approaches to change. This should equip students with, highly necessary, skills to reflect upon how energy policy relates to climate change within a complex and changing world.

Introduction: what is this module about?

 Democracy is a crucial ideal – ‘rule by the people’ - and set of political practices, such as voting in free and fair elections and public debate and deliberation. It is also a deeply contested ideal and a practice.  In several countries it is not unusual to find proponents of very different policy or ideological positions each using the rhetoric of democracy in favour of their position and against their opponents. 

 The ambiguities at the heart of democracy – what is it exactly, how should it be practiced? – are viewed by some as a weakness: maybe, in the end, it is an idea empty of real meaning? However, this very ambiguity may reflect something positive and offer opportunities. Perhaps democracy is flexible: it can be thought of and done differently in different places and contexts. Could democracy be a matter of design for different purposes and contexts; creative and experimental uses of a range of institutions enacting distinct sets of ideals? 

 The module explores democratic design. Looking at a range of democratic principles (equality, freedom, etc.) and institutions (from the familiar such as parliaments to the new and innovative, such as the Brazil-inspired participatory budgeting process), it interrogates the notions of democracy and design. It considers new approaches to democratic change in the face of varied challenges to democratic organisation and effectiveness. 

 Democratic Design is an experimental module in which ideas will be debated and tested without preordained conclusions.