materia: "Money & War" discussion led by Colin Drumm and Harleen Kaur Bagga

materia, a DLCL Focal Group on anthropodecentric thinking, kicked off it's sixth year themed "Life & Transmission" on October 1, 2020 with a discussion on Money & War led by PhD Candidates Colin Drumm (History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz) and Harleen Kaur Bagga (Art History, Stanford).

Colin and Harleen shared the following descriptions of their brief talks: 

Colin Drumm (History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz)
“Sovereign Servility”
This talk will discuss monetary politics and the limitations of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). The discussion will be framed within a dissertation project on the topic of monetary history and political philosophy, with a focus on Mediterranean antiquity and early modern England.

Harleen Kaur Bagga (Art History, Stanford)
“To Besiege is To Be Besieged: The Vertiginous Views of Peter Snayers’ Battle Paintings”
Peter Snayers’ topographic-analytical battle paintings present scenes from the long Eighty Years’ War. This presentation examines the twofold nature of Snayers’ treatment of map-like landscapes in his Siege of Breda. Even as the lands are shown to be transformed, conquered, and thereby wounded, they stretch upward to the cosmos, looming precipitously over the troops, besieging rather than being besieged.