Special Topics in Comparative Literature (488-0-20)
Topic
From Biopolitics to Necropolitics: Foucault, Agamb
Instructors
Alessia Ricciardi
847/491-8259
1860 S. Campus Drive, Crowe Hall #2-133
Meeting Info
Kresge 5531 Comp Lit. Sem. Rm.: Thurs 3:00PM - 5:50PM
Overview of class
In this course, we will take a comparative approach to reading the fundamental texts that in recent decades have shifted entirely the site of the political: Foucault's essays on biopolitics, Agamben's Homo Sacer, and Mbembe's Necropolitics. If for Foucault the possibility of an affirmative biopolitics still exists, such a prospect is no longer true for Agamben and Mbembe. To understand the implications of this shift, we will focus first on Agamben's Homo Sacer and its reinterpretation of biopolitics as thanatopolitics, paying attention to the text's epistemic and geopolitical limits and its ongoing relevance for refugee studies. We will then explore Mbembe's post-colonial redefinition of biopolitics as necropolitics, or the racist subjugation of life to the power of death of unwanted population. What is the relationship between sovereignty and biopolitics? Is racism an effect of biopolitics or its premise? In order to confront these questions, we will reflect on a specific constellation of notions in our contemporary philosophical lexicon that have originated in these and other key texts: state of exception, the ban, homo sacer, bare life, the living dead, death worlds, enmity, abandonment, wars, borders, and brutalism. In addition, we will assess the meaning of the different paradigmatic sites of the modern politicization of life: the camp for Agamben and the plantation, the colonies, and the occupied territories for Mbembe. In the last phase of the course, we will read recent essays by Mbembe in which he tries to conceive forms of resistance to necropolitics. We will pay special attention to Mbembe's concepts of restitution, reparation, and care. Seminar participants are strongly encouraged to find a way to use Foucault, Agamben, and/or Mbembe's work in their own research projects.
Readings will include works by Foucault, Agamben, Schmitt, Mbembe, Fanon, Azoulay, Táíwò, and Weheliye. All readings are in English.
Class Notes
All readings are in English.