“Sensing the Self” considers a variety of theoretical-critical perspectives on the relationship of technology, humanity, and culture in the 20th- and 21st-centuries. We will turn away from a pervasive impression that humans are users who stand apart from instruments, including machines, languages, and other media forms. We will focus instead on the intimacy of the human-technology bond, which not only permits some sociocultural experiences while inhibiting others, but ultimately gives us our sense of self, of who and what we are.
Technologies broadly construed cultivate human life by dampening or amplifying our senses, those apparently natural psychosensory capacities given to our form of life. The first unit of this course will explore how technologies enervate, or deaden, the human sensorium; the second unit will elucidate how contemporary digital forms including film, video games, and so forth can be appropriated to innervate, or awaken that same sensorium; and in the third unit, students will create and share critical media products aimed at expanding the psychosocial and aesthetic experiences available within our cultural milieu.