Syllabus
On Nothing
Syllabus — T2 2025-26
IMPORTANT NOTE: 'ON NOTHING' IS AN OFFLINE MODULE — USE OF DEVICES WILL NOT BE PERMITTED IN THE SEMINAR SPACE, AND HARD COPIES OF EACH WEEK'S READINGS MUST BE BROUGHT TO SEMINAR, TO REFER TO IN DISCUSSION.
APART FROM THE REQUIRED TEXTS (TO PURCHASE OR OBTAIN THROUGH THE LIBRARY), ALL THE READINGS WILL BE INCLUDED IN A PHOTOCOPIED PACKET—AVAILABLE TO PICK UP FROM THE MODULE INSTRUCTOR FROM THE START OF WEEK 5 IN T1.
DETAILS ON 'SELECTIONS' NOTED BELOW WILL BE PROVIDED IN THE READING PACKET.
Week 1 ‘Beginner’s mind’: techniques for attention, concentration, and mindfulness.
Philip Whalen, “Sourdough Mountain Lookout.” Joanne Kyger, “Dragon Wind of Universal Influence Whalen Says.” Eihei Dogen, selections from Shobogenzo Zuimonki, Trans. Shohaku Okumura. Maha-suññata Sutta: The Greater Discourse on Emptiness, translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
Week 2 ‘On the being of nothing’: philosophies of nothing.
Guilhem de Peiteus, “Poem on Nothing.” Fragments of Parmenides. Fridugisus of Tours, On the Being of Nothing and Shadows. John Scotus Erigena, selections from Periphyseon. Meister Eckhart, selections from German Sermons. Jean Paul Sartre, selections from Being and Nothingness.
Week 3 ‘I have nothing to say and I am saying it’: boredom, saying and doing nothing, or ‘doing life’?
Andy Warhol, Sleep (excerpt hereLink opens in a new window / full length hereLink opens in a new window). John Cage, “Lecture on Nothing” (from Silence), 4’33”. Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street.” Selected Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh.
Week 4 ‘Everything from nothing’: contemporary particle physics and cosmology.
Rosmarie Waldrop, “Zero, or the Opening Position.” Frank Close, Nothing: A Very Short Introduction.
Optional meeting with the Elementary Particle Physics Group at U of Warwick (Wed 4 Feb).
Week 5 ‘Literature of the unword’: writing nothing, or ‘at degree zero.’
Anne-Marie Albiach, “Winter Voyage.” Roland Barthes, “Writing and Silence.” Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, selections from Texts for Nothing, “Ping,” Three Dialogues.
Week 6 Reading Week
Week 7 ‘No medium’: art of nothing.
Information as Material, “NOTHING: A User’s Manual.” Lucy R. Lippard and John Chandler, “The Dematerialization of Art.” Craig Dworkin, selections from No Medium. Robert Rauschenberg, White Paintings. Ad Reinhardt, “Twelve Rules for a New Academy.” Ben Lerner, “Institute for Totaled Art” (excerpt from 10:04).
Week 8 ‘Much ado about nothing’: (un)gendering the void.
Selections from Shakespeare. Emily Dickinson, Envelope Poems, eds. Marta L. Werner and Jen Bervin. Anna C. Chave, “Agnes Martin: ‘Humility, the Beautiful Daughter . . . . All of Her Ways Are Empty.’” Audrey Wollen, “Beware Male Artists Making Artwork About Emptiness: Nothing Does Not Belong to You.” Lee Edelman, selections from Bad Education: Why Queer Theory Teaches Us Nothing.
Week 9 ‘The position of the unthought’: Black and Decolonial negativity.
Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell, “Mutron.” Fred Moten, selections from “Blackness and Nothingness (Mysticism in the Flesh).” “On Black Negativity, Or the Affirmation of Nothing: Jared Sexton, interviewed by Daniel Barber." Albert Wendt, selections from The Book of the Black Star. “Overturning the Doctrine of Terra Nullius: The Mabo Case.” John Kinsella, selections from “Is There an Australian Pastoral?”
Week 10 ‘Nothing at all’: the case for degrowth.
Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man.” Giorgos Kallis et al., “Research on Degrowth.” Andrew James Thompson, “Growth and degrowth: Dewey and self-limitation.” Stefania Barca, “The Labor(s) of Degrowth.” Marco Deriu, “Conviviality,” Sylvia Lorek, “Dematerialization,” and Chris Carlsson, “Nowtopians,” from Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, eds. Giacomo d’Alisa et al. Masanobu Fukuoka, selections from The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming.