Play’s Republic

Thanks for your energetic contributions to today’s conversation: I’m very excited about some of the ideas, perspectives, and insights that are beginning to emerge. At the same time, I’m frustrated by the volume of material I didn’t cover: There’s so much to talk about, and a course that is this broad in scope makes it difficult to speak at length about any one topic. To add to the complexity, I’m getting my footing here, especially in terms of working with young scholars whose knowledge base is both very deep and extremely wide. It’s one thing to talk about, say, theorizing technology with a homogeneous group of experts in the Late-19th century Francophone novel. It’s another thing entirely, I am quickly discovering, to talk about theorizing technology with so heterogeneous a cohort.

To that end, in order to feel that I’m doing justice to certain ideas that we’ve touched upon, I want to try to follow-up each conversation with some additional “Suggested Readings.” If you’ve got additional sources to which you want to direct us, please post them, and I’ll add them to a larger list.

Later this evening, I’ll add a list of some of my favorite texts on today’s topics, particularly oriented around issues surrounding Heraclitus and his champion, Nietzsche, about whom we said so little this evening.
Presently, I’ll be posting elements of the syllabus, including reading lists and links, and emailing your user ID’s to you.