`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master -- that's all.'
(L. Caroll – Through the Looking Glass)

When Foucault claimed, ”we need to cut off the King’s head” if we want to find the sites of power other “avenues” became important. Needless to say, power is still ”exercised” from above, but in the ages of the Global Media, this is perhaps the most interesting place to search for new forms of power.
That explains pretty much why I want to take this course. If the Global Media is where power functions, then I would – as interested in both power and politics, like to acquire “tools” to decipher those mechanisms as well as get skills to “re-/built” new power platforms. Hence the production of media/medium

I agree with Hannah Arendt (and Nietzsche for that matter) that language cannot tell who I am, but only what I am – and what I am is Kristian Walther. I’m (still even though I attend Brown this spring) a graduate student at the Department of Political Science at University of Copenhagen – Denmark. My primary interest within the last couple of years has been International Relations and Political Theory and History of Ideas.
That also means that I have no experience in the production of media, but this is what I hope at least for a beginning to get from this course.

Barthes on “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers”

Since the text is esoteric and contains a number of interesting issues, I only focus on pages 309-312.

The relationship between power and language is significant. As Barthes points out if one wants to be “properly” understood one needs to invoke “the Law” i.e. the grammar of language and thereby authority. The alternative is the human, all-to-human (in a paraphrase of Nietzsches book, with the same title) – the free spirit, the artist, who breaks the chains of the Law, but then is faced with the audience.
What is the alternative? – Well as Barthes points out, there is actually no alternative. Whenever one invokes language, one always produces and reproduces power. Whether the relationship between the teacher and the audience is to be taken literally or not it signifies the importance of language in shaping perceptions. This is also the case when we receive information. If the social reality only exist through perspectives it also means the each discourse invoke some kind of authority, which structures it. Teaching then should not just be in the form of learning a theory or a discourse, but in addition to critical investigate what kind of authority, power and (perhaps) interest a given discourse serves. This is hopefully the task of this course. To learn to participate in “the battle of discourses”

I apologize for not letting Heath Ledger play the (in-)significant role, that was intended