John Fekete Distinguished Lecture

The annual John Fekete Distinguished Lecture series was established in November 2011 and inaugurated in November 2013 by the Cultural Studies PhD Program to honour John Fekete on his retirement from Trent in 2012. The idea of the lectureship is to invite distinguished visitors to the university to share their most recent or forthcoming publications that are influential and important in the field of cultural inquiry.

Cultural Theory, Mimesis, and the Algorithm Dispositif

Davide Panagia

Professor of Political Science Department, also serving as Chair, UCLA

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  Thursday, November 7th, 2024

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  7:30 pm

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  Bagnani Hall, Traill College

Seminar title: The Algorithm Dispositif: What is it?
Friday morning, November 8th (precise time and location to be determined)

Lecture Abstract

Our contemporary theoretical and critical vocabularies in cultural theory are inadequate to the mediatic ontologies of the algorithm dispositif. The reason is quite straight forward: algorithms are not mimetic media whereas our aesthetic and political traditions of criticism are rooted in judgments of and about representations. This means that attempts to develop critiques of the algorithm dispositif are both misinformed and misguided if they assume that the dilemmas arising from algorithmic intermediality may be adequately managed with critical theories of judgment rooted in mimesis.

By unpacking the above thesis statement, this talk seeks to outline how and why this dilemma matters to our cultural thinking and to the teaching of, and about, algorithms in cultural studies. In doing so the talk elaborates the possibility of new forms of critical thinking that attend to the dispositional powers of the algorithm.

About Davide Panagia

Davide Panagia is Professor of Political Science at UCLA, where he teaches Political Theory. He is a former Co-Editor of the journal, Political Theory.

He received his B.A. degree from the University of Manitoba (with Honors). He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and completed a Master degree (M.Litt.) in Politics. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at The Johns Hopkins University.

He teaches courses in contemporary political theory, aesthetics and politics, affect theory, political theory and cinema, political theory and algorithmic cultures, and theories of textual interpretation. He was the Co-Editor of the journal Theory & Event (2010-2015) and continues to serve as a Coordinating Editor. Prior to coming to UCLA he was Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies at Trent University, Canada (2004-2014).

For more information about the speaker, see https://polisci.ucla.edu/person/davide-panagia/