HMKA03254U OBS NYT KURSUS: Moderne Kultur/Kunsthistorie: Kulturhistorisk emne 3: All that is solid melts into air – Catastrophe, Waste and Devaluation

Catastrophe is both a core cultural narrative and the point at which all narratives collapse and disappear. Being the destructive topos par excellence, it has also been instrumental in developing many of our concepts and categories, from psychology to history, ethics to aesthetics. This course walks the epistemic disaster zone and undertakes a forensic analysis of its debris. It starts from the assumption that disasters maintain a crucial relationship to value, both economic and cultural. While the 19^th and 20^th centuries were characterised by a belief in rising global wealth and prosperity, the increased rate of natural and man-made disasters has made it clear that no asset is ever safe from destruction. Today, material possessions and immaterial resources like university degrees and intellectual property can be made worthless from one day to the next. Houses are swept away by floods, and pensions invested into defaulting banks. The fear of waste has become central, connecting the contemporary to a cultural history from Aeschylus to Beckett that considers being-in-the-world as being-worthless. Exploring this viewpoint, the course treats trash as a way of life and traces tales of catastrophic devaluation from the 19^th century to the present.

Key Questions: What is the relationship between disasters and value? Are disasters only ever destructive? What coping strategies are deployed to resist material and immaterial devaluation? How was the fear of waste taken up in philosophy, literature, music and art?