Biopolitics is generally understood as power directly manipulating life, but a careful analysis shows that biopolitical interventions are always mediated--that is, like other forms of ideology, as Zizek has argued, they always require a fantasy to sustain them, whether they are public service billboards or Hollywood films. Understanding the essential falsity of ideology is not enough, in other words, to understand its hold over the viewer. In this seminar, we will explore some theories of biopolitics as well as theories (largely but not exclusively psychoanalytic) that attempt to explain the fascination that screen fantasies hold over us in the service of the preservation and exploitation of life. Readings include Valiaho, Esposito, Campbell, Agamben, Zizek, McGowan, Freud, Lacan, Foucault, Neroni, Edelman, Mbembe, Jackson and others. The fantasies of biopolitics play out in innumerable films, television serials, and other forms of fiction-based media, and they also certainly structure media coverage and the painfully real political fantasies that structure our lives in increasingly alarming ways.

Mondays 4:00-6:00