Fall 2022
Matthew Brown
3 credits
Graduate students only
Several relatively recent interventions in African and African Diaspora critical theory revisit the idea that the logic of race can be situated in relation to non-human life, whether posthuman or even animalian. Is the life of the raced subject, theorists ask, imagined in terms of its quality or its mere materiality? Such interventions may explicitly engage with Giorgio Agamben’s notion of “bare life,” while others relate to it only tangentially. In this course, advanced graduate students from any discipline will have an opportunity to engage with recent and conceptually rich explorations of critically theorizing race.
Course readings may include:
Agemben, Homo Sacer
Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics
Hartman, Scenes of Subjection
Weheliye, Habeas Viscus
Mbembe, Necropolitics
Diabate, Naked Agency
Jackson, Becoming Human
Wilderson III, Afropessimism
Boisseron, Afro-Dog
