Online Cultural Theory Lectures by Doctor Hat

Below is a series of lectures available on YouTube which all took place in the famous Freud Disco Study in 2016. The lectures are predominantly of a cultural theory and psychogeography nature and cover areas such as: subjectivity, semiology, psychoanalysis, cartography, urban walking, ideology, etc. You can view an introduction here or click on the links below to take you to more information and to the online lecture itself:

Introduction to the Lecture Series
Are You Interpellated?
What is Myth?
What Does the Map Represent?

Introduction to the Lecture Series

Are You Interpellated?

Abstract: A lecture on the theory of ideology by Louis Althusser. By providing examples from popular culture and psychogeography, this lecture explores the concept of interpellation as discussed by Althusser in 'Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses'.

Audience: Undergraduate students in the area of cultural studies, psychogeography, politics, psychology, media and philosophy. Anyone interested in: neo-Marxist approaches, how ideology operates on individuals and how subjectivity is socio-politically formed.

What’s covered: ideology, interpellation, structuralism, the State, civic life, the family, subjectivity, psychogeography, popular culture (film).

What is Myth?

Abstract: A lecture on Roland Barthes’ Mythologies. Concentrating on his essay ‘Myth Today’, this lecture introduces Barthes’ second-order semiological system and demonstrates how to carry out a semiological analysis.

Audience: Undergraduate students in the area of cultural studies, literature, media and philosophy. Anyone interested in advertising, language or literature.

What’s covered: semiotics, language, myth, ideology, popular culture, structuralism.

What Does the Map Represent

Abstract: A lecture on mapping that critiques the modernist cartographic project. Themes explored are: the centred subject, inside/outside, map/territory and reality versus representation. This lecture compares the traditional analysis of maps with the psychoanalytical approach to dream analysis.

Audience: Undergraduate students in the area of cultural studies, cartography, postmodern geography, history and psychoanalysis. Anyone interested in maps in general.

What’s covered: cartography, ideology, dream analysis, representation, praxis, Sigmund Freud, Claudio Minca, world fairs.