Undergraduate Module Descriptor

POC3106: Biopolitics of Security

This module descriptor refers to the 2018/9 academic year.

Please note that this module is only delivered on the Penryn Campus.

Module Content

Syllabus Plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:

 Introduction to Biopolitics.

  • Governmentality: Understanding the ‘conduct of conduct.’
  • Creating Bare Life and States of Exception: Understanding life reduced to nakedness.
  • Regulating Death.
  • Surveillance and Control: Understanding how societies are governed and regulated.
  • Resistance to Biopolitics.

Learning and Teaching

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

Scheduled Learning and Teaching ActivitiesGuided independent studyPlacement / study abroad
221280

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

CategoryHours of study timeDescription
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities2211x 2 hour seminars
Guided Independent Study50Seminar preparation through directed reading
Guided Independent Study6To complete the formative essay plan
Guided independent study24To complete the review essay
Guided independent study48To complete the critical research paper.

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).

Indicative Reading List

This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.

Basic reading:

Foucault, M., 1984. The Foucault reader. Pantheon. (Selections: "The Body of the Condemned", ‘"Docile Bodies", "Panopticism").

Foucault, Michel. "Essential Works of Foucault 1954-84. Vol. 3: Power." (1994). (Selections: “Governmentality”).

Scott, David. "Colonial governmentality." Social text 43 (1995): 191-220.

Basaran, Tugba. "The saved and the drowned: Governing indifference in the name of security." Security Dialogue 46, no. 3 (2015): 205-220.

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford University Press, 1998. (Selections)

Agamben, Giorgio. State of exception. Vol. 2. University of Chicago Press, 2005. (Selections)

Butler, Judith. Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. Verso, 2006. (Selections)

Ticktin, Miriam. "Policing and humanitarianism in France: immigration and the turn to law as state of exception." Interventions 7, no. 3 (2005): 346-368.

Doty, Roxanne Lynn. "Bare life: border-crossing deaths and spaces of moral alibi." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29, no. 4 (2011): 599-612.

 

Films

Modern Times. Directed by Charlie Chaplin (1936)

Lemon Tree. Directed by Eran Riklis (2008)

The Battle of Algiers. Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1965)

The Architecture of Violence. Directed by Ana Naomi de Sousa (2014)