Embodiment, Biopolitics and Technologies KVIK 206 Course Tutors:

Embodiment, Biopolitics and Technologies
KVIK 206
Course Tutors:
Nadzeya Husakouskaya (nadzeya.husakouskaya@skok.uib.no)
Donna McCormack (donna.mccormack@skok.uib.no)
Picture copyright: Tero Saarinen company
Embodiment, Biopolitics and Technologies
KVIK 206
Course Tutors: Nadzeya Husakouskaya and Donna McCormack
This course offers a critical engagement with theories of embodiment, with a specific focus on
the role of biopolitics and technologies in the production, reconfiguration and contestation of
normative bodily forms. The course is grounded in feminist, gender and queer, as well critical
race and postcolonial, theories of the body. Students will critically analyze theories of
biopower, biotechnologies and biopolitics through focused readings of critical sources, visual
materials, literary and cinematic texts, and secondary sources. Students will engage with a
broad spectrum of issues that are concerned with a contextualized reading of the body in
relation to both technology and politics. Therefore topics that may be addressed in the course
include: transgender, intersex, and socio-cultural anxieties of (un)doing gender; embodied
resistance to cultural norms in a techno-pharmaco-pornographic era; technologies, nationhood
and postcolonialism; monstrous embodiment; narratives of health and illness; and queer and
disability theories.
The course aims to develop critical thinking skills, specifically in relation to issues
concerning gender, sexuality, race, the body, the nation, ability, and the production of
normativity. It further aims to enable students to gain a range of analytical skills in engaging
with varying socio-political and cultural phenomena. Students should also expect to have the
opportunity to develop knowledge of the theoretical field of embodiment, biopolitics and
technology. The textual focus will be broad and will therefore include a wide range of sources
from gender studies, queer and feminist theories, cultural studies, sociology, literature and
cinema, and anthropology.
Along with primary and secondary mandatory readings, the course will also include
one screening of a film. The assessment will include one presentation to be given during the
seminars and one take-home exam to be completed after the course.
Embodiment, Biopolitics and Technologies
KVIK 206
CONTENTS
Introduction – Becoming a Body
(August 22, 2014)
Mandatory Readings
Sara Ahmed, ‘Embodying Strangers’, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality
(London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 38–54.
Jasbir Puar, ‘The Cost of Getting Better: Suicide, Sensation, Switchpoints’, GLQ 18.1 (2011), pp. 149–
158.
Noreen Giffney & Myra Hird, ‘Queering the Non/Human’, Queering the Non/Human, ed. by Noreen
Giffney & Myra Hird (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 1–16.
Optional Readings
Donna Haraway, ‘Companion Species, Mis-recognition and Queer Worlding’, Queering the
Non/Human, ed. by Noreen Giffney & Myra Hird (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. xxiii–xxvi.
Anne McClintock, ‘The Lay of the Land: Genealogies of Imperialism’, Imperial Leather: Race,
Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 21–74.
Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Colonial Studies and the History of Sexuality’, Race and the Education of Desire:
Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham: Duke University Press,
1995), pp. 1–18.
Technologies and Politics of Life, Race and Sexuality
(August 29, 2014)
Mandatory Readings
Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1997).
Ann Cvetkovich, An Archive of Feeling: Trauma, Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 1–7.
Optional Readings
bell hooks, ‘Selling Hot Pussy: Representations of Black Female Sexuality in the Cultural
Marketplace’, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), pp. 122–132.
Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006), pp. 3–15.
Biopolitics, Capitalism and Pharmocopornagraphic Era
(September 5, 2014)
Mandatory Readings
Michel Foucault, ‘Lecture from 17 March 1976’, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College
de France, 1975-76 (New York: Picador, 2003), pp. 237–264.
Beatriz Preciado, ‘The Pharmacopornographic Era’, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs and Biopolitics in the
Pharmocopornographic Era (New York: Feminist Press, 2013), pp. 23–54.
Michelle O’Brien, ‘Tracing This Body: Transsexuality, Pharmaceuticals, and Capitalism’, The
Transgender Studies Reader 2, ed. by Susan Stryker & Aren Aizura (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp.
56–65.
Optional Readings
Michel Foucault, ‘We “Other Victorians”’ and ‘The Repressive Hypothesis’, The Will to Knowledge:
The History of Sexuality Vol. 1 (London: Penguin Books, [1976] 1998), pp.1–15 and pp. 15–50.
Postcolonial Clinics and the Violence of Health Care
(September12, 2014)
Mandatory Readings
Manjula Padmanabhan, Harvest (London: Aurora Metro Press, 2003).
Michel Foucault, ‘A Political Consciousness’, Birth of the Clinic (London: Routledge, [1963] 1994),
pp. 22–37.
Optional Readings
Lawrence Cohen, ‘The Other Kidney: Biopolitics Beyond Recognition’, Body & Society 7.9 (2001),
pp. 9–29.
Freaks, Animals and Non/Humans
(September 19, 2014)
Mandatory Watching
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Alien: Resurrection (2007) – this film will be screened prior to the seminar at a prearranged time.
Mandatory Readings
Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, ‘From Wonder to Error: A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in
Modernity’, Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. by Rosemarie GarlandThompson (New York: New York University Press, 2006, pp. 1–19.
Patricia MacCormack, Animal Catalyst: Towards Ahuman Theory (London: Bloomsbury Academic
Publishing), pp. 1–12.
Optional Readings
Sarah Franklin, ‘Origins’, Dolly Mixtures: The Remaking of Genealogy (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2007), pp. 1–17.
Normalizing Trans*Bodies: (Un)diagnosing Gender
(September 26, 2014)
Mandatory Readings
Judith Butler, ‘Undiagnosing Gender’, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 75–101.
Aren Aizura, ‘The Romance of the Amazing Scalpel: “Race”, Labor and Affect in Thai Gender
Reassignment Clinics’, The Transgender Studies Reader 2, ed. by Susan Stryker & Aren Aizura (New
York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 496–511.
Nikki Sullivan, ‘Transmogrification: (Un)becoming Other(s)’, The Transgender Studies Reader, ed. by
Susan Stryker & Stephen Whittle (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 552–564.
Dan Irving, ‘Normalized Transgressions: Legitimizing the Transsexual Body as Productive’, The
Transgender Studies Reader 2, ed. by Susan Stryker & Aren Aizura (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp.
15–29.
Optional Readings
Susan Stryker, ‘(De)Subjugated Knowledge: An Introduction to Transgender Studies’, The
Transgender Studies Reader, ed. by Susan Stryker & Stephen Whittle (New York: Routledge, 2006),
pp. 1–17.
Sandy Stone, ‘The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto’, The Transgender Studies
Reader, ed. by Susan Stryker & Stephen Whittle (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 221–235.
Medical Authority and Intersex Subversion
(October 3, 2014)
Mandatory Readings
Cheryl Chase, ‘Hermaphrodites with Attitude: Mapping the Emergence of Intersex Political Activism’,
The Transgender Studies Reader, ed. by Susan Stryker & Stephen Whittle (New York: Routledge,
2006), pp. 300–314.
Judith Butler, ‘Doing Justice to Someone: Sex Reassignment and Allegories of Transsexuality’,
Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 57–74.
Brenna Munro, ‘Caster Semenya: Gods and Monsters’, Safundi: The Journal of South African and
American Studies, 11.4 (2010), pp. 383–396.
Optional Readings
Michel Foucault, ‘Introduction’, Herculine Barbin (London: Vintage Books, 2010), pp. vii–xvii.
Judith Butler, ‘Foucault, Herculine, and the politics of sexual discontinuity’, Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 93–111.
Katrina Karkazis, ‘Fixing Sex: Surgery and the Production of Normative Sexuality’, Fixing Sex:
Intersex, Medical Authority and Lived Experience (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 133–
176.
Gendered Bodies: Performance, Representation, Technotopias
(October 17, 2014)
Mandatory Readings
Judith (Jack) Halberstam, ‘Drag Kings: Masculinity and Performance’, Female Masculinity (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 231–266.
Judith Butler, ‘Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion’, Bodies That Matter:
On Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 121–142.
Judith (Jack) Halberstam, ‘Technotopias: Representing Transgender Bodies in Contemporary Art’, In a
Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York, New York University
Press, 2005), pp. 97–124.
Optional Readings
Alison Bechdel, ‘Chapter 4’, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006), pp.
87–120.
Ann Cvetkovic, ‘Drawing the Archive in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home’, Women’s Studies Quarterly
36.1–2 (2008), pp. 111–128.
Self, Other and Corporeal Cuts
(October 24, 2014)
Mandatory Readings
Richard McCann, ‘The Resurrectionist’, The Best American Essays 2000 (New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 2000), pp. 1–13.
Margrit Shildrick, ‘Corporeal Cuts: Surgery and the Psycho-social’, Body & Society 14.1 (2008), pp.
31–46.
Optional Readings
Margrit Shildrick, ‘Imagining the Heart: Incorporations, Intrusions and Identity’, Somatechnics 2.2
(2012), pp. 233–249.
Hopeful Monsters and Queer Disability
(October 31, 2014)
Mandatory Readings
Hiromi Goto, ‘Hopeful Monsters’, Hopeful Monsters (Vancouver Arsenal Press, 2004), pp. 135–168.
Robert McRuer, ‘Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence’, Crip Theory: Cultural
Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York: New York Press, 2006), pp. 1–32.
Optional Readings
‘“Whatever That Is”: Hiromi Goto’s Body Politic/s’, Studies in Canadian Literature 32.2 (2007), pp.
75–96.
Body, Resistance and Queer Futurity
(November 7, 2014)
Mandatory Readings
José Estaban Muñoz, ‘Introduction: Feeling Utopia’, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer
Futurity (New York, New York University, 2009), pp. 1–18.
Jessica Zychowicz, ‘Two Bad Words: FEMEN & Feminism in Independent Ukraine’, Anthropology of
East Europe Review 29.2 (2011), pp. 215–227.
Samantha Kwan and Louise Marie Roth, ‘The Everyday Resistance of Vegetarianism’, Embodied
Resistance. Challenging the Norms, Breaking the Rules, ed. by Chris Bobel & Samantha Kwan
(Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011), pp. 186–196.
Optional Readings
Morgan Bassichis, Alexander Lee, and Dean Spade, ‘Building an Abolitionist Trans and Queer
Movement with Everything We’ve Got’, The Transgender Studies Reader 2, ed. by Susan Stryker &
Aren Aizura (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 653 – 667.