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POLS 3011 A
Politics of Sexuality / Sexual Politics

AS/POLS 3070
Psychology & Politics

POLS 4670
GS/POLS 5670
Politics of Cyberspace

GS/POLS 6085
GS/SPTH 6033
The Politics of Identity

GS\POLS 6086 3 W
GS SPTH 6632 3 W
Thinking Power and Violence

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York University
Department of Political Science
GS\POLS 6086 3.0 / GS\SPTH 6632 3.0

2004

In the twentieth century there have been numerous attempts to think seriously about the meaning of power and violence as fundamental categories of human existence. The objective of `Thinking Power and Violence' is to develop an appreciation of the elusive multidimensionality of violence as a phenomenon.

`Thinking Power and Violence' is concerned with violence in many forms and manifestations: violence at the foundation of human community, conservative violence, divine violence, ecstatic violence, sacrificial violence, redemptive violence, self as violence against self and other, exclusionary violence, the violence of liberal freedom and the commodity, counter-hegemonic violence, the violence of the spectacle, the violence of outsiders and gender violence.

Seminar Presentation: 1) Select three passages (no more than 4 or 5 lines each) that express vividly or cogently some of the dominant tendencies in the reading; 2) explain their meaning; and 3) pose one question on each passage to focus on for discussion; also, 4) select one passage (no more than 4 or 5 lines) that appears to go against the grain of the text and explain how this is so.
Make copies for all seminar participants.

Essay Assignment. Write an essay on the topic of your choice relating to violence. A minimum of three texts on the course must be integrated into your essay.

Essay Topic Abstract - a half page abstract outlining your topic and the course readings that you will be using needs to be approved before writing the essay.

Giorgio Agamben. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.
Giorgio Agamben. 2002. Remnants of Auschwitz.
Hannah Arendt. 1970. On Violence.
Georges Bataille. 1997. `The Notion of Expenditure,' `The Meaning of General Economy,' `Sacrifice, the Festival and the Principles of the Sacred World,' `Knowledge of Sovereignty' & `The Psychological Structure of Fascism,' The Bataille Reader, eds. Botting and Wilson.
Georges Bataille. 1989. Theory of Religion.
Jean Baudrillard. 2002. The Spirit of Terrorism.
Walter Benjamin. 1978. `Critique of Violence,' Reflections.
Jacques Derrida. 1992. `The Force of Law,' Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, eds. Cornell, Rosenfeld, and Carlson
Jacques Derrida. 1995. `Declarations of Independence,' New Political Science.
Franz Fanon. 1968. The Wretched of Earth.
Rene Girard, 1979. Violence and the Sacred.
Rene Girard, 2001. I See Satan Falling Like Lightening.
William James, 1906. `The Moral Equivalent of War'
MacKinnon, Catharine. 1993. Only Words.
Carl Schmitt. 1996. The Concept of the Political.
Sorel, Georges. 1999. Reflections on Violence.
Gayatri Spivak. 2003. Death of a Discipline.