Disfiguration: Art after Humanism
AFVS 239
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
This course addresses two intersecting discourses. First, critiques of humanism from Sylvia Wynter, who analyzes the figure of "Man" as a specter of colonialism, Michel Foucault, who charts the rise of "human sciences," and "post-humanists" like Donna Haraway, who explore human relations to animals and machines. These thinkers will inform a revision of the history of modern art, which is often told through the disappearance of figuration into abstraction. Instead, we will work with the term disfiguration to demonstrate how modern art has consistently addressed the figure, but has submitted it to violence, metamorphosis and dissemination.
Class Notes
FALL 2026: Check the course web site before sending a petition in my.harvard.
Recommended Prep
Demonstrated capacity to do graduate level work.
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
