Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Final paper: Santa Claus

This idea was inspired by a conversation I had with my younger brother when he began to doubt the existence of Santa Claus. He told me that he couldn't believe that magical elves made complicated electronics like video game systems or computer games. I want to talk about the potential "death" of the imagined Santa Claus.

The general question that I will be answering is the following: How has the imagined Santa Claus myth become deconstructed by network culture/the post-modern condition/or capitalism?
I know that this question will have to be narrowed down much more from here.

Texts
The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Jameson-push back on canonizations of classics, aesthetic production as means of capitalist production
Appadurai
Tsing-Allegorical packages?

It seem as though the first half of the course might be more helpful for this paper. Please feel free to post suggestions!