Course Description


FIMS 9604B-650 (Winter 2021)   Special Topic: Informing and Unforming Colonial Imaginaries

Course Description
Colonialism has long depended upon data management techniques, which reduce populations to categories and treat information and humans as things. The practices that we call racial capitalism, data capitalism, and surveillance capitalism are centuries old. This course will consider the role of information infrastructures in the formation of colonial imaginaries and the expansion of empire. It will inquire into the uses of information for those for whom information was gathered and classified versus the people about whom information was collected, organized, and distributed—people who could claim ownership of information and access to human rights, and those who could not. We will critique information communication technologies from the 18th century to the present, and we will imagine techniques for undoing and remaking, and un-forming and reorganizing information.

This course is no longer active. Please contact FIMS Undergraduate Student Services, fims@uwo.ca, for more information.



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