[csaa-forum] Seminar at UNSW: 'The Cultural Turn in War', Mike Hill

[Collin Chua]

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The Cultural Turn in War: A Media Ecology Approach to the Change from Narrative to Numbers



When Tuesday 5 Sept, 5pm - 6.30pm
Where Cinema 327, Robert Webster Building, UNSW Sydney





The effect of narrative to the formation of community and identity is of longstanding concern in historical media studies. Critics like Benedict Anderson, Jürgen Habermas, and Walter Ong, for example, examine print-based media such as newspapers and the novel insofar as they provided the means by which specific kinds of selves could be created, how distinct communities could be imagined, and how narrative provided the basis for social organization itself.

This talk focuses on the culture-media-identity connection in the so-called cultural turn in modern warfare, as exemplified in two specific US military programs: Human Terrain System and applied war neuroscience. Specifically, I'll distinguish between narratological ways of practicing counterinsurgency, which goes back at least as far as colonialism, toward data-based war, as manifest in biometrics and military neuroscience. Looking closely at current field manuals as well as the latest in the defense industry's interest in the cybernetic features of the human brain, I'll compare the difference between storytelling and algorithmic communication as they reveal certain changes concerning time (memory, real time), category (whiteness, others), and ‘scale’ (planetary, molecular).

I'll conclude by arguing that the word ‘terrain’ in Human Terrain System becomes literally manifest once we move from narrative to numbers, in the sense that human anatomy can itself be weaponized as seen as a biological part of the terrestrial battle field. Synaptic networks function alongside cultural and technical ones and begin to be conceived as a single, all expansive, area of military operation that breaks down the distinction between human, data, and thing.

Mike Hill is Professor of English at the University at Albany, SUNY. He has published widely and teaches eighteenth-century studies, critical race theory, and contemporary cultural studies. His books are: The Other Adam Smith (Stanford:  2015, co-authored with Warren Montag); After Whiteness: Unmaking an American Majority (NYU: 2004); Masses, Classes, and the Public Sphere (Verso: 2000, contrib. ed.); and Whiteness:  A Critical Reader (NYU: 1997, contrib. ed.). He is currently writing a book called Ecologies of War for the University of Minnesota Press.

Image credit: Elizabeth King

Enquiries contact: SAM Seminar Convenor, Collin Chua – c.chua at unsw.edu.au<mailto:c.chua at unsw.edu.au>

Visit the event page for speaker biographies and more information.<https://sam.arts.unsw.edu.au/events/sam-seminar-cultural-turn-in-war/?mc_cid=99a8835e62&mc_eid=[UNIQID]>
Bookings not required.






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Robert Webster Building is located mid-way off the UNSW main walkway. Map Reference G14. Cinema 327 is located on the third floor. More information on getting to UNSW.<http://www.facilities.unsw.edu.au/getting-uni?mc_cid=99a8835e62&mc_eid=[UNIQID]>








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