MUS20620 Post-Truth, Politics & Music - Facts and Emotion in a Digitised World

Academic Year 2019/2020

In 2016 both the Brexit campaign in the UK and the US elections have brought the notion of a new age of “post-truth” into sharp focus. Alongside it “alternative facts”, “fake news” and similar terms have become more and more commonplace. Expertise appears to be discredited, gut feeling at least as important as facts, and facts themselves no longer valid and reliable. How and why did we get to this point, are there ways out of it, and has it really become impossible to distinguish between facts and their different interpretations?
This module will track philosophical, sociological and political concepts that shaped today’s competing world views, beginning with the enlightenment. The module’s core hypothesis is that since the late nineteenth century the focus of academic attention shifted more and more from the observation of the world around us (“realism”) to the way in which our societal and individual predispositions, the unconscious part of our brain and our emotions influence how we perceive and interpret that world. We will follow this trajectory starting with Nietzsche via Freud’s psychoanalysis and Popper and Kuhn’s theories of scientific progress up to poststructuralist and postmodern positions which appear to aid a complete relativism in which “anything goes”. The module will conclude with recent pushbacks against these tendencies, including calls for a “new realism” and neuro-scientific findings regarding the interaction of perception and emotion. All of these concepts will be interrogated with an eye on how they relate to issues of morality and fairness – concepts that are conspicuously absent among post-truthers and bullshitters. Finally we will look at the significant impact of the internet on our behaviour and our ways to gain and assess information.
In the first class of each week we will discuss a philosophical or sociological concept while looking at how it is embodied by a piece of music – usually an opera – in the second hour (after all, I'm a music lecturer). Room will be given to questions raised by students with regard to issues they are particularly concerned about.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

Students will enhance their ability to
- identify and evaluate facts as opposed to opinions/interpretations
- recognise what lies behind individual positions in public discourses
- reassess the values of rational thinking and emotional engagement in relation to different types of discursive situations
- gain a deepened understanding of a range of intellectual concepts such as enlightened rationality, positivism, objectivity, relativism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, post-truth, bullshit and others
- gain insights into how music is shaped by societal forces and can in turn shape it on occasion
- understand the way in which the internet has changed our ways to access and process information, our behaviour in relation to others in quasi-anonymous contexts, and how we are constantly manipulated by it

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

24
Autonomous Student Learning

76
Total

100
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
- lectures
- reflective learning
- critical writing
- debates
- case-based learning 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Essay: Discussion of one of a range of given problems / topics (2,500 words). Week 12 n/a Graded No

35
Multiple Choice Questionnaire: Multiple Choice Test Week 11 n/a Graded No

15
Journal: Reflective Journal Coursework (End of Trimester) n/a Graded No

35
Multiple Choice Questionnaire (Short): Multiple Choice Test Week 5 n/a Graded No

15

Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Autumn No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, on an activity or draft prior to summative assessment
• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Formative feedback will be given on entries for the first two weeks of the reflective journal. Group feedback will be given after the two MCQ tests while individual feedback will be given for the final versions of the reflective journal and for the essay.

Post-Truth, Politics and Music


Bibliography


• Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/23497-elemente-und-urspr-nge-totaler-herrschaft
• Julian Baggini, A Short History of Truth. Consolations for a Post-Truth World (London: Quercus, 2018).
• James Ball, Post-Truth. How Bullshit Conquered the World (London: Biteback, 2017).
• John Bargh, Before You Know It. The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do (London: William Heinemann, 2017).
• Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, “Why We Lie: The Science Behind Our Deceptive Ways”, National Geographic, June 2017; https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/lying-hoax-false-fibs-science/; accessed on 15 January 2019.
• Matthew D’Ancona, Post-Truth. The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back (London: Ebury Press, 2017).
• Evan Davis, Post-Truth. Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It (London: Abacus, 2018).
• Maurizio Ferraris, Manifesto of New Realism, transl. Sarah De Sanctis (New York: Suny Press, 2014).
• Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).
• Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, translation from the 2d German edition by C.J.M. Hubback (London, Vienna: International Psycho-analytical Press, 1922). Available as an e-book in the UCD Library.
• Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud. Vol. 19, 1923-1925 (London, Vienna: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1961).
• Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, transl. Joyce Crick ; with an introduction and notes by Ritchie Robertson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Available as an e-book in the UCD Library.
• Steve Fuller, Post-Truth. Knowledge as a Power Game (London , New York: Anthem Press, 2018).
• Olivia Goldhill, “150 years ago, a philosopher showed why it’s pointless to start arguments on the internet”, Quartz, 2 January 2019, https://qz.com/1513176/john-stuart-mills-philosophy-shows-arguing-online-is-futile/; accessed on 28 January 2019.
• Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, translated by Edmund Jephcott (Stanford University Press, 2002).
• Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?”, in Immanuel Kant, On History, edited, with an introduction by Lewis White Beck, translated by Lewis White Beck, Robert E. Anchor and Emil L. Fackenheim (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), 3-10.
• Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012).
• George Lakoff, The Political Mind. A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and its Politics (New York et al.: Penguin, 2009).
• George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
• Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge, translation from the French by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, foreword by Fredric Jameson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).
• Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018).
• Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise. The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
• George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Annotated Edition (London: Penguin, 2013).
• Friedrich Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy And Other Writings, eds Raymond Geuss, Ronald Speirs, transl. Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
• Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, transl. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann (London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968).
• Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery ( Abingdon: Routledge, 2002).
• Karl R. Popper, “Of Clouds and Clocks. An Approach to the Problem of Rationality and the Freedom of Man”, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, http://www.the-rathouse.com/2011/Clouds-and-Clocks.html, accessed on 22 January 2018.
• Ryan R. Reeves, “Why Do We Lie?”, The Gospel Coalition, published on 7 June, 2017; https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/ryan-reeves/why-do-we-lie/; accessed on 15 January 2019.
• John Russon, Sites of Exposure. Art, Politics, and the Nature of Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017).
• Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters, translated and introduced by Reginald Snell (Dover, 2005; republication of Mineola/New York: Dover Publications, 1954). Originally written in German in 1794. http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/schiller-education.asp, accessed on 22 January 2018.
• Wag the Dog (DVD), EDV 9009, 1998.




Operas

G.F. Handel, Giulio Cesare in Egitto
• George Frederick Handel, Giulio Cesare in Egitto (DVD), Decca 3-8291-1991-7, 1990.
• Winton Dean and John Henry Knapp, Handel’s Operas 1704-1726, revised edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995), 483-526.
• Thomas Forrest Kelly, First Nights at the Opera (New Haven/London: Yale University Press 2004), 1-61.
• Craig Monson, “‘Giulio Cesare in Egitto’: From Sartorio (1677) to Handel (1724)”, Music & Letters 66/4 (1985), 313-43.


W.A. Mozart, The Magic Flute
• W. A. Mozart, Die Zauberflöte (DVD), Deutsche Grammophon 073-003-9, 1991.
• William Mann, The Operas of Mozart (London: Cassell, 1977), 592-640.
• Rose Rosengard Subotnik, “Whose Magic Flute? Intimations of Reality at the Gates of Enlightenment”, Nineteenth-Century Music 15 (1991-2), 132-50.
• Jessica Waldoff, “The Music of Recognition: Operatic Enlightenment in the ‘Magic Flute’”, Music & Letters LXXV (1994), 214-35.


Georges Bizet, Carmen
• Georges Bizes, Carmen (DVD), Deutsche Grammophon LC00173, 1989.
• Susan McClary, Carmen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1992.


Richard Strauss, Salome
• Richard Strauss, Salome (DVD), Opus Arte OA0996D, 2008.
• Udo Kultermann, ‘The “Dance of the Seven Veils”. Salome and Erotic Culture around 1900. Artibus et Historiae, 27/53 (2006), pp. 187-215.
• William Mann, Richard Strauss. A Critical Study of His Operas (London: Cassell, 1964), 39-62.
• Derrick Puffett, Richard Strauss. Salome (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press, 1989).


Arnold Schoenberg, Moses und Aron
 Arnold Schoenberg, Moses und Aron (DVD), EuroArts 2058178, 2009.
 Elliott Gyger, “Speech, Song and Silence: Modes of Utterance in ‘Moses und Aron’,” Opera Quarterly 23/4 (October 2007), 418-40.
 Ethan Haimo, “Numerology, and ‘Moses und Aron’,” Opera Quarterly 23/4 (October 2007), 385-94.
 Eric Prieto, “Adaptation and Adaptability in Arnold Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 48/2 (April 2012), 118-33.


György Ligeti, Clocks and Clouds
 György Ligeti, Clocks and Clouds, The Ligeti Project, CD 3, Teldec 256469673-5, 2004.
 Richard Steinitz, György Ligeti. Music of the Imagination (London: Faber & Faber, 2003), 198-202.


Luciano Berio, Sinfonia
 C. Catherine Losada, “Between Modernism and Postmodernism: Strands of Continuity in Collage Compositions by Rochberg, Berio, and Zimmermann”, Music Theory Spectrum 31/1 (Spring 2009), 57-100.
 David Osmond-Smith, Playing on Words. A Guide to Luciano Berio's Sinfonia (London: Royal Musical Association 1985).


John Adams, The Death of Klinghoffer
 John Adams, The Death of Klinghoffer (DVD), Decca 074 189-9, 2003.
 Leo Kraft, “The Death of Klinghoffer”, Perspectives of New Music Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter, 1992), pp. 300-302.


The Robin Thicke / Pharrell Williams plagiarism case
Students are asked to find online sources on this case (which revolves around the song “Blurred Lines”) themselves and establish the relevant facts, as well as develop their own view of the issue and the ruling.