CAFE2013 Keynotes (1)Douglas Kellner

Date: April 12(Fri.) afternoon
Keynote:
Douglas Kellner

        Douglas Kellner is George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education and Distinguished Professor at UCLA and is author of many books on social theory, politics, history, and culture, including Camera Politica:The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film, co-authored with Michael Ryan and an Emile de Antonio Reader co-edited with Dan Streible.Other works include Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity; Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond; works in cultural studies such as Media Culture and Media Spectacle; a trilogy of books on postmodern theory with Steve Best; and a trilogy of books on the media and the Bush administration, encompassing Grand Theft 2000, From 9/11 to Terror War, and Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy.

        As author of Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism, Kellner is editing collected papers of Herbert Marcuse, four volumes of which have appeared with Routledge. Recently, Kellner’s Guys and Guns Amok :Domestic Terrorism and School Shootings from the Oklahoma City Bombings to the Virginia Tech Massacre won the 2008 AESA award as the best book on education. In 2010, he published with Blackwell Cinema Wars: Hollywood Film and Politics in the Bush/Cheney Era and just published in 2012 Media Spectacle and Insurrection, 2011: From the Arab Uprisings to Occupy Everywhere.

★More information on Dr. Kellner's website★ http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellner.html

April 12 Speech Topic: "Media Spectacle and Insurrection, 2011 : From the Arab Uprisings to Occupy Everywhere”

Abstract

        In a series of books and articles I have been arguing that the concept of media spectacle provides a key to interpreting contemporary culture and politics, arguing that media spectacle has become a global phenomenon organizing news, journalism, politics, and entertainment. I will argue that in addition to politics, war, terrorism and media events constructed and presented as media spectacle, in 2011 democratic insurrections have also emerged as a powerful form of media spectacle. 

        Engaging the North African Uprisings and what Al-Jazeera calls the “Arab Awakening,” I will discuss how the democratic uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya produce new models of political transformation that have been transmitted throughout the region as media spectacle and have generated intense conflict. I argue that these events provide grounding to use once again the concept of revolution developed by Herbert Marcuse and will discuss the sense in which the Arab Uprisings are or are not revolution and how the Arab Uprisings impacted political movements in Spain, Greece, and the Occupy movements which became a global phenomenon. I will also discuss the key role of Al-Jazeera as a voice of democratic revolution in the Arab Uprisings and how 2011 may appear as a historical marker of political insurrection, much as 1968 functions in radical political imaginaries.