Biopower, bioresistance. 4018-KON339-CLASS
Protection and management of life have become central values of modern politics; bioethical and biotechnological dilemmas - the main controversies of our times.
Biopolitics has replaced politics.
The seminar is a continuation of a winter semester course „Biopolitics: Introduction”. In this semester we will concentrate on the most recent texts dealing with the problematics of biopower and we will analyze contemporary social and political controversies, such as: war on terror, patenting of organisms, non-normative sexual identities, the ecological crisis. Press articles and fragments of films will serve as starting points for our discussions.
This semester we will pay special attention to the problem of resistance to biopower - bioresistance. On one hand, we will concentrate on the theory of bioresistance: is resistance to biopower possible at all? On what grounds? How do different thinkers envision it? On the other hand, we will pay close attention to practices: which contemporary political phenomena can be regarded as examples of bioresistance? How should they be analyzed?
We will focus on the relation between theory and practice - using academic texts to analyze contemporary reality - and discussion. The link between biopower, economics and technology will be an important context of the seminar.
Type of course
Prerequisites (description)
Learning outcomes
- knowing the basic terminology of the humanities and social sciences
- knowing the relationships between humanities disciplines and the exact and natural sciences in a philosophical and social context
- basic skills in using interdisciplinary research methods and tools to analyse phenomena of contemporary culture
- analysing artistic, philosophical and sociological texts using the appropriate research tools, and presenting the results of such work
- understanding the need for continual education after graduation
- understanding the dynamics of scientific, cultural and social development and keeping up with new research methods and paradigms
Assessment criteria
Participation in classes is compulsory. Student may choose between two assessment methods: final essay or final oral exam.
Bibliography
Adorno, Francesco Paolo (2014). Power over Life, Politics of Death: Forms of Resistance to Biopower in Foucault, in: The Government of Life. Foucault, Biopolitics, and Neoliberalism, ed. by Vanessa Lemm and Miguel Vatter, New York: Fordham University Press.
Bednarek J., (2011). Życie jako moc deterytorializacji, w: Praktyka Teoretyczna 2-3/2011, s. 161 - 172.
Cooper, Melinda (2008). Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era, University of Washington Press.
Foucault, Michel (1991). Introduction to Normal and Pathological, in: Canguilhem, George (1991). Normal and Pathological, trans. C. R. Fawcett, in collaboration with R. S. Cohen, New York: Zone Books.
Lemke T., (2010). Biopolityka, tłum. T. Dominiak, Sic!, Warszawa.
McNeilly, Kathryn (2013). Framing Wrongs and Performing Rights in Northern Ireland: Towards a Butlerian Approach to Life in Abortion Strategising. Journal of International Women's Studies, 14(4), 95-108.
Muhle, Maria (2014). A Genealogy of Biopolitics: The Notion of Life in Canguilhem and Foucault, in: The Government of Life. Foucault, Biopolitics, and Neoliberalism, ed. by Vanessa Lemm and Miguel Vatter, New York: Fordham University Press.
Nimmo, Richie (2015). The Bio-Politics of Bees: Industrial Farming and Colony Collapse Disorder, in: Humanimalia 2015: 6(2):1-20.
Rajan, Kaushik Sunder (2006). Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Rose, Nikolas (2006). The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century, Princeton University Press.
Thacker, Eugene (2006). The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture, Cambridge: MIT.
Thacker, Eugene (2008). After Life. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Wilmer, S.E, Zukauskaite, Audrone (2015). Resisting Biopolitics: Philosophical, Political, and Performative Strategies, Routledge.
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: