HST61026 Biopolitics: Medicine, Meaning and Power
30 credits, Semester two
Module leaders:
Listed on all history MA programmes
Module summary
‘Biopolitics’ has been one of the most influential concepts in academic scholarship over the last 40 years. In its broadest form ‘biopolitics’ refers to collective approaches to promote, regulate, understand and end life. This involves interventions around sexuality and fertility, promoting population growth or limitation, and counting, categorising, or otherwise defining human beings and human nature. It is often thought to be a modern invention, but this is contested.
This course will introduce you to a wide variety of efforts to survey and control human populations, across more than a thousand years. You will learn about how states and other groups have tried to control and manage sexuality and reproduction, as well as infectious diseases and other perceived threats. You will learn about how human beings have been cast outside of ‘the normal’ including those labelled as ‘mad’ or ‘disabled’. You will become adept at thinking across a wide variety of contexts, and comparing different approaches to defining and classifying humans - including according to raced and sexed identities.
You will learn to use ideas of ‘biopolitics’ to understand human societies and human identities. You will be able, by the end of the course, to think carefully and critically about the place of human bodies in various political systems - how bodies and life itself are controlled, restricted, promoted, marginalised and how humans’ capacities are understood.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, you will be able to:
Explain what ‘biopolitics’ has referred to in the works of various scholars, and how the concept has been used.
Identify specific examples of biopolitics or biopolitical action in history, and compare and contrast them in their meanings, intended effects and consequences.
Demonstrate their understanding of the various positions in the debates concerning when biopolitics begins to be a useful concept in history, especially in relation to Michel Foucault’s founding assertion that it is a ‘modern’ invention.
Demonstrate an ability to discuss and write about various traditions of thought, including religious prohibitions, scientific experiments, and public health law, as all relating to ‘biopolitics’ in different, sometimes overlapping ways.
Assessment methods
Assessment type - % of final mark
4000 word essay - 80%
Engagement and participation task(s) - 20%
You will complete a 4000 word essay on a topic related to one of the module's key themes. You will define your own essay topic in discussion with your tutor.
You will also complete an engagement and participation exercise based on the learning activities and environment for the module. This task will be set by the module leader but may include activities such as presentations, reflective seminar diaries, contributions to discussion forums or collaborative documents.
Additional learning and teaching information
Teaching and indicative seminar schedule:
The module will be taught in ten, two-hour classes. You will also have individual tutorial contact with the module tutors in order to discuss your assessment for this module.
Indicative seminar plan:
What is biopolitics? Introductions and orientations
When is biopolitics? A modern invention?
Sexuality: publics and privates
Fertility: births, marriages and deaths
Sanitation and public health
Race and biologised ‘others’
Mental health
Disabilities: marginalisation and social spaces
Brains: vapours, phrenology, neuroscience
Conclusions: the politics of life, bodies and medicine
Selected reading:
Wendy Brown Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution Zone Books (2015) Chapter 2: ‘Foucault’s Birth of Biopolitics Lectures: Charting Neoliberal Political Rationality’ pp.47-78
Laura Garrison ‘Biopolitics: An Overview’
Mona Lilja & Stellan Vithagen ‘Sovereign Power, Disciplinary Power and Biopower’ Journal of Political Power 7(1) (2014) pp.107-126
Thomas Lemke ‘Preface’ and ‘Introduction’ in Biopolitics: an advanced introduction New York University Press (trans. Eric Trump) (2011) pp.1-12
Some of the original lectures (collected, edited, and translated) that launched the concepts:
Michel Foucault Society Must Be Defended: lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76 Penguin (2004)
Michel Foucault, Security, territory, population: lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78 Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979. Palgrave MacMillan (2008)