🔵 🔴 🟡 Course description

The course analyzes the main methodological approaches - anthropological, phenomenological, sociological, psychoanalytic - that directly involve the human body in everyday practices and the artistic process. It also focuses on learning modern foreign and Greek terminology of the interdisciplinary approach to the body and on familiarizing students with texts by important thinkers (Austin, De Certeau, Barthes, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Braidotti, Bulter, etc.) from a selection of representative excerpts from their work. 

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to: 

• have an overview of the evolution of the representation of the body in corresponding eras

• become familiar with methods of analysis on the one hand and ways of approaching complex aesthetic, philosophical and scientific issues on the other, 

• cultivate a critical capacity regarding the contentious issues between artistic practice and theoretical research

• understand both the distinct character and the hybrid points of intersection between art, philosophy and science at the level of ontology, methods, tools and purposes, but also the need for collaboration between artists and scientists to expand human possibilities.

🔵 🔴 🟡 Theory (2 hours)

1. Introduction I: language, a common place, do words correspond to things?

2. Introduction II: How do we do things with words? (Austen)

3. Introduction II: Corpus | What do we mean when we talk about text? (De Serto, Barthes)

4. The Grotesque Body (16th century – Renaissance) (Bakhtin, Barthes)

5. The Docile Body, a Body for Modernity I (Foucault_Biopolitics)

6. The docile body, a body for modernity II and beyond? (Deleuze_control societies)

7. The hermaphrodite body and the construction of gender (Butler)

8. From the machine body to the desiring machines (Deleuze-Gatari)

9. The Phantom Member (Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty) 

10. The cyborg or the prosthetic body (Haraway)

11. The monster or otherwise the dysphoric body (Prethiado). The tension between the "natural" and the represented

12. The Dead Body (Agamben)

13. Conclusions: Challenges, Risks, Prospects.
     

🔵 🔴 🟡 Workshop (1 hour)

Through interactive practices and exercises during the courses, we converse with the aim of understanding the range of aesthetics, creative dimensions and importance of the body in everyday life and in art. 

Review language: Greek

🔵 🔴 🟡 Evaluation method:

• Public presentation (50%)
• Written presentation (50%)

• Face-to-face
• Use of PowerPoint and audio-visual examples (13 lectures)
• Support of the learning process through eClass with weekly provision of audiovisual material, links, photos, extra bibliography and related information (exhibitions, cultural institutions, etc.)

https://eclass.uop.gr/courses/PDA168/  

🔵 🔴 🟡 Course Textbooks [Eudoxus]

• Makrynioti, Dimitra, ed. The limits of the body. Interdisciplinary approaches. Athens: Nisos, 2004. - Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of perception. Transl. Kiki Kapsambeli. Athens: Nisos, 2016.
• De Serto, Michel, Inventing the Daily Practice, The Multifaceted Art of Action, trans. Kapsampeli K., Athens, Smili, 2010.

Extra Bibliography

• Athanasiou, Athena. Life on the edge. Essays on the body, gender and biopolitics. Athens: Ekkremes, 2007.
• Adamopoulou, Areti, eds. Body language. Notes on performance. Ioannina: University of Ioannina, 2014.
• Rigopoulou, Pepi. The body: Supplication and threat. Athens: Plethron, 2008.
• Butler, Judith. "Performative Performances and the Constitution of Gender: An Essay on Phenomenology and Feminist Theory", transl. Margarita Miliori, in Feminist Theory and Cultural Criticism, ed. Athanasios, 381-407. Athens: Nisos, 2006.
• Butler, Judith. Bodies with meaning: Demarcations of "gender" in speech. Transl. Pelagia Marketou. Athens: Ekkremes, 2008.
• Dimitrakaki, A. Art and globalization. From the postmodern point to the biopolitical arena. Hestia Bookstore, 2013.
• Thomas Laqueur, Constructing Gender. Body and Social Gender for the Ancients to Freud, transl. Pelagia Marketou. Athens, Polytropon, 2003.
• Bakhtin, Michail, Rabelais and his world, on the popular culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, trans. Pinakoulas Giorgos, Crete University Press, Heraklion, 2017
• Foucault, Michel, Surveillance and Punishment, The Birth of Prison, trans. Betzelos Tasos, Plethron, Athens, 2011.
• Foucault, Michel, History of Sexuality I: Will to Know, trans. Betzelos Tasos, Plethron, Athens, 2011.
• Mouse, Marcel, Sociology and Anthropology, trans. Paradellis Theodoros, Editions of the Twenty-First, Athens, 2004.
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception (1945), trans. Kapsampeli Kiki, Athens, Nisos, 2016.
• Deleuze, Gatari, Capitalism and schizophrenia, The Anti-Oedipus, trans. Chatzidimou Kaiti, Ralli Ioulietta, Athens, Rappas, 1981
• Deleuze, Gatari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia 2, A Thousand Plateaus (1980), trans. Patsogiannis Vasilis, Athens, Plethron, 2017
• Haraway, Donna, Hominids, Cyborgs and Women, The Reinvention of Nature Transl. Pelagia Marketou, Alexandria 2014