Life and Death: Relations of Biopower and Necropower
STS 320
Fall 2026
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
CHUM 302 |
The blunt truth of human suffering permeates people's lives and yet people attempt to push back in myriad ways against the certainties of death. What conceptual spaces do living humans occupy that do not equally place them under the specter of death? This seminar considers the social structures and cultural ideas that position ways of being and understanding humans as they traverse the spaces between life and death. It traces the conceptual foundations and empirical sites for two contrasting yet complementary theories of social power that aim to explain this shared conceptual space: biopower and necropower. As theories of power, biopower and necropower are not things that exist in the world, but rather ways of defining, thinking about, and resisting discursive and material relationships that do, in fact, exist in societies. Biopower is a theory of power that examines how and why social institutions target, intervene, and invest in the life processes of living beings in the name of improving population health. Necropower is a theory of power that examines how and why social institutions function to produce mass suffering towards the ends of death. This course asks what social, cultural, and ethical ideas help map the embodied, relational, and sociopolitical spaces between "alive" and "dead" humans? |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS SISP |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
| Instructor(s): Hatch,Anthony Times: ...W... 01:20PM-04:10PM; Location: TBA |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 0 | JR major: 0 | | |
| Seats Available: 15 | GRAD: 0 | SR non-major: 7 | JR non-major: 6 | SO: 2 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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