Indo Arya's Warehouse at Hassangarh, Haryana. At the time of its opening in 2012, India's largest distribution center.
The calamitous reach of the global commodity chain stands as a monument to modernity's practice of production. As contemporary critiques consider its mounting intractability, they reveal the worldwide pattern of logistical machinary given by the media forms and historic technologies that govern its flow. In their conceptual simplicity and historical transigence lies an opportunity for transformation, for innovation, and for interruption. While the vocabulary it draws upon might seem familiar, the language of logistics is not fixed. It must be made--and so can be re-made--by the tools and techniques assembled every day in service to supply.
This syllabus, intended for collaborative iteration and published on both Supply Studies and Github, is not intended to be taken simply as a Supply Studies or Critical Logistics reader--it contains far too many entries to serve that purpose. It presents a broad selection of texts from which more specialized seminars can be developed. In my own practice students are asked to read two (rotating) core texts for each meeting and an additional text on their own. When I have presented this as a workshop, readings are limited to shorter articles and essays rather than monographs and edited volumes.