spectator@mcm - Brown University

spectator
Interview with Alex Galloway, Modern Culture and Media ‘96
By Adam Davis, MCM Senior, Track 1
Adam Davis: Why did you decide to join the MCM
department (or art/semiotics—what was it called
when you were at Brown?) Where there any specific
classes, professors, or activities that led you to the
department?
Alex Galloway: MCM was the weirdest thing in
town, so of course I was curious. I think I had found
a copy of Baudrillard’s “Selected Writings” in high
school, and so by the time I got to Brown I had some
inkling that I wanted to learn more about critical
theory. For a short time as a freshman I considered a
philosophy concentration, but analytic philosophy
was not my cup of tea. MCM was a good way to
study continental philosophy and critical theory.
So it was a natural fit. In retrospect I can see how
special MCM was; it’s rare to have that kind of
curriculum taught at the undergraduate level.
AD: What was your favorite MCM class? Favorite
professor?
AG: Impossible to choose! I learned most of what
I know from Ellen Rooney, Philip Rosen, and
Neil Lazarus (now at Warwick University). I also
took a few courses from Michael Silverman and
Elizabeth Weed that affected me a great deal. My
single favorite class was probably a course that
Ellen and Neil co-taught on Marx’s Capital. I teach
an undergraduate Marx course today at NYU that
is in some distant way a derivation of that course.
It was fun to teach it last fall and have the Occupy
movement spring up all around us, as if on cue.
AD: How has studying in the MCM department
affected you in your career? As a media scholar,
it would seem that you’ve been highly affected by
your experience in MCM—how do you view that
trajectory?
AG: Indeed in many ways I’m the exception,
since I never left MCM, at least not intellectually.
If I were to pick one thing, it might be the way in
which MCM always stressed the relation between
theory and practice. The coupling is fraught with
complication, to be sure, but it was important for
me to hear at a young age that theory must always
return to practice and practice fortified by theory.
That’s something I’ve carried with me, as I learned
how to program in the late 1990s, and later engaged
in a parallel practice that involved both writing and
software production.
AD: What kinds of projects are you currently working
on? I know your new book, The Interface Effect, just
came out. What was it like working on that project?
AG: The new book is essentially about allegory.
The approach is very much indebted to the MCM
curriculum, as well as my mentor in graduate
[v1 - p27]
back to p1