Signs and the State

Undergraduate / Graduate

Relations of communication, as well as coercion, are central though less visible in Weber's famous definition of the state as monopoly of legitimate violence. This course reconsiders the history of the state in connection to the history of signs. Thematic topics (and specific things and sites discussed) include changing semiotic technologies; means; forces and relations of communication (writing, archives, monasteries, books, "the" internet); and specific states (in early historic India and China, early colonial/revolutionary Europe, especially France, Britain, and Atlantic colonies, and selected postcolonial "new nations").