“This book uses “low theory” (a
term I am adapting from Stuart Hall’s work) and popular knowledge to explore
alternatives and to look for a way out of the usual traps and impasses of
binary formulations. Low theory tries to locate all the in-between spaces that
save us from being snared by the hooks of hegemony and speared by the
seductions of the gift shop. But it also makes its peace with the possibility
that alternatives dwell in the murky waters of a counterintuitive, often
impossibly dark and negative realm of critique and refusal. And so the book
darts back and forth between high and low culture, high and low theory, popular
culture and esoteric knowledge, in order to push through the divisions between life
and art, practice and theory, thinking and doing, and into a more chaotic realm
of knowing and unknowing.”
- Judith Halberstam The Queer Art of Failure
The Mean Green K Lab will utilize movies, television shows,
music and other instruments of popular culture to explain and explore
traditional philosophical concepts. This method of using popular culture has
been branded “low theory” which I find to be a welcome break from the “high
theory” that often plagues critical debate. Judith Halberstam, professor of
English, American Studies and Ethnicity and Gender Studies at the University of
Southern California, defines low theory as the “theoretical knowledge that
works at many levels at once, as precisely one of these modes of transmission
that revels in the detours, twists, and turns through knowing and confusion,
and that seeks not to explain but to involve” (Halberstam, 15). In seeking to involve students in their understanding
of critical authors students will be given a very basic outline of a
philosophical theorist or concept and then will become involved in figuring out
the contours of the theory via critical reading of film and other popular culture.
With the proper guidance Kung Fu Panda can
help students navigate the complexities of Nietzsche’s theory of ressentiment, The Brave Little Toaster can provide a
new perspective on the emerging field of Object Oriented Ontology and Lady Gaga
can provide a helpful introduction to performance theory. Helping students see
the fun in theory, and helping them map their own encounters with philosophical
concepts gives a more complete understanding of the arguments that they run and
answer in debates.
Reference:
Halberstam, Judith The
Queer Art of Failure Durham & London: Duke University Press 2011
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