Waste Land assignment

In class yesterday, we talked about some of the ways in which the nation-state serves, for better or worse, to define our humanity, our relationships to other human beings, and hence our rights and responsibilities. As Catherine pointed out the nation-state is a fiction: that is, it’s a social construction (akin to a novel or a painting), not a natural fact (like, say, DNA or the force of gravity). To say that the nation-state is a fiction, not a natural fact, is not to say that it’s not real; rather, it is to say that the nation-state is not a timeless, inescapable feature of life on earth, like wind, or rain, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but one among the many possible and actual ways that human beings have organized themselves into societies. There have been — and are — alternatives.

 For next class, please view the film Waste Land (on DU Course Media) and write a 300–500-word response to ONE of the following questions:

1. How do the artistic fictions we see created in the film serve to criticize, support, or otherwise comment upon the political/legal fiction of the nation-state?

OR

2. What is ONE alternative form of social organization to the nation-state that the film explicitly or implicitly explores? Do you think that alternative is more just than the nation-state or less just? And why?

N.B. There’s no reading for this week, only viewing.