Prof. Currah                                                                                                     Fall 2008
Brooklyn College, CUNY                                                                                                         

 

 

BIOPOLITICS

Political Science 95 W: Capstone Senior Seminar

 

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION

 

States kill, but they also develop technologies of life as well. States look to the “health” of their populations by counting and measuring inhabitants (vital statistics), tracking them through the issuance of identity documents, marking life passages by giving them birth certificates, marriage certificates and death certificates (identification protocols). In this seminar, we will look at theories and practices of “biopolitics”  in relation to contemporary and classical theories of the state. We will examine technologies of power and development of mechanisms for governing the life, health, and death of populations. We will explore the notion of “governmentality” and its application to particular institutions and discourses such as public health, immigration, surveillance, and human security studies. Students will be exposed to different forms of critical analysis and research methods. Those we will read include Agamben, Canguilhem, recently-translated Foucault lectures, Rose (Nikolas).

 

COURSE GOALS AND LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

 

Students completing this course should be able to:

 

  • explain different approaches to the study of “biopower”;

  • understand and describe the distinction between traditional notions of power and sovereignty and theories of biopower and biopolitics;

 

  • apply the theoretical knowledge learned in this course to contemporary empirical phenomena;

 

  • formulate a research question in light of the contemporary social and political theories of biopolitics read in this course;

 

As the capstone senior course, Political Science 95W requires students to hone the critical and creative thinking skills developed in other courses in the major. Students should be able to:

 

  • identify and summarize the main arguments of scholarly sources orally and in writing;

 

  • use quotations, paraphrases, and appropriate documentation in written assignments;

 

  • advance a compelling argument orally and in writingt;

 

  • craft arguments using supportive evidence appropriate to social science;

 

For more information on the assessment of your work in this class, refer to my grading rubric on Blackboard.

 

YOU WILL DEMONSTRATE YOUR PROGRESS BY THE FOLLOWING MEASURES: (COURSE REQUIREMENTS):


Note that all grades for this course, including the final grade, will be graded on a scale, not a curve.

Participation: 40%

·         Class attendance is absolutely required and active participation is encouraged.  You are expected to attend all classes, barring illness or emergencies.  No one will be penalized for missing a class because of a religious holiday. Attendance will be taken at the beginning of class.  One percentage point will deducted from your semester grade for every unexcused absence; 1/3 point for each late arrival.    

·         Preparation for class:  Always come to class prepared, having read the reading well. Always print out the week’s readings and bring them to class. They will be the basis for informed discussion.

·         Reading journals:  Turn in each week a typed paragraph on each article read for the class. Describe the argument and evaluate it.

·         Each student will be responsible for presenting and leading a discussion on a reading at least twice during the semester.

·         Participation in class discussions.

·         Most classes will incorporate in-class writing assignments to get you thinking about the readings, or to develop your writing skills.  Active engagement in these assignments is necessary.

·         At least two meetings with me to your research paper; preferably when you construct your topic and when you have completed the first or second draft.

·         Participation in the collaborative writing/editing process online.

·         Presentation on your research project.

·         Surprise quizzes on the readings--if necessary.

Research paper: 60%

In this is a writing intensive course, you will be expected to produce a 15-20 page research paper. You will have the opportunity to revise the paper, multiple times.  In the penultimate draft, I will assign a provisional grade. You will have one more opportunity to revise for a better grade—though be aware that revision usually involves significant changes to a paper, not just cosmetic ones.

OFFICE HOURS:

Office: 3401 James Hall

Tuesday:

10:40 – 11:30 a.m.
Thursday:

10:40 – 11:30 a.m.

2:00  – 3:00 p.m.

Or by appointment

 

CONTACT INFORMATION:
My office phone is 718-951-5000 x1750.  You can call me there doing office hours, but don’t leave messages there, since the system erases them very quickly.  If you can’t reach me in my office, the best way to contact me is by email, pcurrah@brooklyn.cuny.edu or profcurrah@gmail.com

 

COURSES TEXTS:

Requried

·         Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference, with Writing in the Disciplines. Available in the Brooklyn College Bookstore (in the basement of Boylan) in the book sections for English 1 or English 2.

·         Download and print (or bring a laptop to class) all required readings from Blackboard.

 

BLACKBOARD:

·         Blackboard will be used for posting required and optional readings, AND supplementary resources.

·         There are many writing resources posted in Blackboard. Be sure to use them.

·         Check Blackboard often for updates and announcements.

·         We can start a Wiki or Discussion Board or Blog if people want.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
Brooklyn College Policy:  “The faculty and administration of Brooklyn College support an environment free from cheating and plagiarism. Each student is responsible for being aware of what constitutes cheating and plagiarism and for avoiding both.  The complete text of the CUNY Academic Integrity Policy and the Brooklyn College procedure for implementing that policy can be found at this site:  http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/policies.  If a faculty member suspects a violation of academic integrity and, upon investigation, confirms that violation, or if the student admits the violation, the faculty member MUST report the violation.”

My individual policy, which fits within College policy: All substantiated violations of academic integrity, including plagiarism, will result in a grade of F on the assignment in question. In addition, I will also submit a Faculty Action Report form designating academic and possibly a disciplinary penalty (suspension, expulsion). For examples of plagiarism, go here: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core3/currah/acinteg.htm

All students should read carefully and thoroughly the 2007-2010 Brooklyn College Bulletin, especially pp. 35-51, pp. 52-59, and pp. 74-83, for a complete listing of academic regulations of the College.

CENTER FOR STUDENT DISABILITY SERVICES
In order to receive disability-related academic accommodations students must first be registered with the Center for Student Disability Services. Students who have a documented disability or suspect they may have a disability are invited to set up an appointment with the Director of the Center for Student Disability Services, Ms. Valerie Stewart-Lovell at 718-951-5538. If you have already registered with the Center for Student Disability Services please provide me (your professor) with the course accommodation form and we will then discuss appropriate plans for your specific accommodation.

IMPORTANT COLLEGE DEADLINES
Tuesday, September 2 : Last day to add a course;

Wednesday, September 10: Last day to file Pass/Fail application;

Tuesday, September 16: Last day to drop a course without a grade;

Wednesday, October 15: Last day to file for Fall 2008 Graduation;

Wednesday, November 12: Last day to apply for withdrawal from a course with a W (non-penalty) grade;

Wednesday, November 12: Last day to resolve Spring/Summer 2008 Incomplete grades

Wednesday, November 12: Last day to resolve Spring/Summer 2008 ABS grades

* Please note that for students whose programs required an adviser's approval prior to registration and for students who wish to withdraw from basic skills courses (e.g., English 1), prior approval of CAASS (Academic Advisement) is required.

* Please note that resolution of Spring/Summer 2008 Incomplete and Absent grades will only be accepted if the missing work was made up prior to the deadline.  Exceptions to this policy will require the approval of CAASS and must be supported by clear documentation of the reasons for the request.  It is your prerogative to establish an earlier deadline in order to give you time to grade the missing work.

WEEKLY READINGS

 

Thursday, August 28th 

 

First Assignment: 

·         Email me at profcurrah@gmail.com so that I have your correct email address.

·         Put Political Science 95W in the subject line.

·         Let me know if you’ve managed to access Blackboard for this course.

·         Be sure to include your NAME in the email, I can’t tell who you are by your user name.

 

Thursday, September 4 :  Introduction to the course -- Bodies and Biopolitics

Monica Casper and Lisa Jean Moore, "Calculated Losses: Taking the Measure of Infant Mortality," from Missing Bodies: The Politics of Visibility. New York: New York University Press (forthcoming in 2009).

 

Giroux, Henry A. 2006. “Reading Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the Biopolitics of Disposability.” College Literature 33(3):171-196.

 

Thursday, September 11:  What is Power? Traditional Theories of State Power

Sheldon Wolin, “From Modern to Postmodern Power,” in Politics and Vision (2004)

 

Thomas Hobbes, excerpts from Leviathan (1651)

 

Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures” (1976)

 

 

Thursday, September 18:   Theories of Biopolitics

            Michel Foucault, “Governmentality” (1978)

 

Foucault, “Right of Death and Power Over Life,” From History of Sexuality, Volume 1.

 

Giorgio Agamben, “Biopolitics,” from Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998): 127-135.

 

OPTIONAL:

            Foucault, Chapter 1: 10 January 1979 Lecture, from Biopolitics

            Foucault, Chapter 2: 17 January 1979 Lecture, from Biopolitics

            Foucault, Chapter 3: 14 January 1979 Lecture from Biopolitics

 

 

Thursday, September 25: Liberal Government and Techniques of the Self

Nikolas Rose, “Governing ‘Advanced’ Liberal Democracies”

 

Barbara Cruikshank, “Revolutions within: self-government and self-esteem”

 

Find and circulate, in advance if possible, a popular article (from a magazine, web page, newspaper) that provides an example of the kind of power described by Cruikshank and Rose

 

OPTIONAL

Graham Burchell, “Liberal Government and techniques of the self”

 

Thursday, October 2:  Biopolitics and Health Policy

            Nikolas Rose, “Biopolitics in the Twenty-First Century”

 

Stephen Katz and Barbara L. Marshall, “Is the Functional ‘Normal’? Aging, Sexuality, and the Biomarketing of Successful Living”

 

Find an example, and circulate in advance, an example of health policy as biopolitical power.

 

Thursday, October 9th:  NO CLASS

 

Thursday, October 16: Biopolitics: Critical Geographies, Border Management

 

Stephen Legg. 2005. “Foucault’s Population Geographies: Classifications, Biopolitics and Governmental Spaces.” Population, Space, and Place 11:137-156.

 

Louise Amoore, “Biometric Borders: Governing Mobilities in the War on Terror,” Political Geography 25 (2006).

 

 

Thursday, October 23rd:  Welfare and Sexual Regulation

 

William Bennett, “Welfare Reform Must Address the Crisis of Legitimacy”

 

Gwendolyn Mink, "Ending Single Motherhood" (2006)

           

Anna Marie Smith, "The Swarming of Paternafare," Appendix from Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation.”
           

Anna Marie Smith, "From Paternafare to Sexual Regulation"

           

OPTIONAL:

Smith, “Biopower and Sexual Regulation.”

 

Thursday, October 30th: The Biopolitics of Reproduction

Carol Stabile, "Shooting the Mother: Fetal Photography and the POlitics of Disappearance." (1998)         


L. L. Wynn and James Trussell, "The Social Life of Emergency Contraception in the United States: Disciplining Pharmaceutical Use, Disciplining Sexuality, and Constructing Zygotic Bodies.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, September 2006, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 297-320

 

 

Thursday, November 6th:  The Biopolitics of  Reproduction, continued; and Education

 

Michelle Fine, "Swimming: On Oxygen, Resistance, and Possibility for Immigrant Youth under Siege.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly, March 2007, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 76-96        

 

Catherine Waldby and Melinda Cooper, "The Biopolitics Of Reproduction: Post-Fordist Biotechnology and Women’s Clinical Labour"

 

 

Thursday, November 20th:  IN-CLASS WRITING WORKSHOP

 

 

Thursday, November 27th:  NO CLASS

 

 

Thursday, December 4th:  IN-CLASS WRITING WORKSHOP

 

Thursday, December 11th:  IN-CLASS WRITING WORKSHOP

 

 

Bibliography:

 

Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Amoore, Louise. 2006. “Biometric Borders: Governing Mobilities in the War on Terror.” Political Geography 25:336-351.

Anderson, Warwick. 2006. Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Armstrong, David. 1995. “The Rise of Surveillance Medicine.” Sociology of Health and Illness 17(3):393-404.

Bashford, Alison. 2006. “Global Biopolitics and the History of World Health.” History of the Human Sciences 19(1):67-88.

Braun, Bruce. 2007. “Biopolitics and the Molecularization of Life.” Cultural Geographies 14:6-28.

Burchell, Graham, Colon Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds. 1991. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Busby, Helen and Paul Martin. 2006. “Biobanks, National Identity and Imagined Communities: The Case of UK Biobank.” Science as Culture 15, No. 3, 237-251.

Canguilhem, Georges. 1978. On the Normal and the Pathological

Farmer, Paul. 2005. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press. See Chapter 2, “Pestilence and Restraint: Guantanamo, AIDS, and the Logic of Quarantine.

Fassin, Didier and Estelle D’Halluin. 2005. “The Truth from the Body: Medical Certificates as Ultimate Evidence for Asylum Seekers.” American Anthropologist 107(4):597-608.

Feldman, Jonathan Michael. 2007. “From Warfare State to ‘Shadow State’: Militarism, Economic Depletion, and Reconstruction.” Social Text 25(2):143-168.

Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977.

Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collčge de France 1977-1978. Michael Senellart, ed. and Graham Burchell, trans. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Foucault, Michel. 1978. “Governmentality”

Foucault, Michel. Society Must be Defended

Foucault, Michel. 1978. “Governmentality”

Gates, Kelly A. 2005. “Biometrics and Post-9/11 Technostalgia. Social Text 23(2):35-53.

Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. 2007. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Katz, Stephen and Barbara L. Marshall. 2004. “Is the Functional ‘Normal’? Aging, Sexuality, and the Bio-Marking of Successful Living.” History of the Human Sciences 17(1):53-75.

Legg, Stephen. 2005. “Foucault’s Population Geographies: Classifications, Biopolitics and Governmental Spaces.” Population, Space, and Place 11:137-156.

Marshall, Thomas H. (1950). Citizenship and Social Class and other Essays. Cambridge, Cambride University Press.

Medevoi, Leeron. 2007. “Global Society Must Be Defended: Biopolitics Without Boundaries.” Social Text 25(2):53-79.

Mbembe, Achille. 2003. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture 15(1):11-40.

Rabinow, Paul and Nikolas Rose. 2003/1994. The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984. New York: The New Press.

Reid, Julian. 2006. “Life Struggles: War, Discipline, and Biopolitics in the Thought of Michel Foucault.” Social Text 24(1):127-152.

Rose, Nikolas. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

Nicolas Rose, “Governing `Advanced’ Liberal Democracies”

Scott, James. 1998. Seeing Like a State. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Serlin, David. 2004. Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Shah, Nayan. 2001. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Snyder, Sharon L. and David T. Mitchell. 2001. “Re-Engaging the Body: Disability Studies and the Resistance to Embodiment.” Public Culture 13(3):367-389.

Tremain, Shelley. 2001. “On the Government of Disability.” Social Theory and Practice 27(4):617-636.

Waldby, Catherine and Robert Mitchell. 2006. Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Woodward, Kathleen. 1999. “Statistical Panic.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 11(2):177-203.