Overview
General Instructions: Unit three PAPER DUE December 5th by midnight Address two of the below questions in 3-5 pages each (total of 6-10 pages of writing). One response must engage with Marx(isms) (one of your responses must address questions 1, 2,5). One response must engage with Foucault (one of your responses must address questions 3 or 4). No AI use allowed. AI generated papers will receive a zero as they are a form of academic dishonesty (claiming work as one’s own when one did not write it). Please only cite from the readings covered in this class (use numbers in the text when you cite the course material). When other parts of the texts are referred to in student writing, it is often a demonstration of AI use. 1. Why does Marx claim that a capitalist political economy reverses the meaning of human requirements/radically changes human needs? Relatedly, what does Marx mean when he says that life becomes a means to life? (i.e. What are human needs before a capitalist political economy and what are they after?) Please explain in your response what wage labor is/what a capitalist political economy is. Furthermore, please detail the four kinds of alienation that Marx describes in his text “Estranged Labor”? Please explain what each kind is and connect these forms of alienation to the change in human requirements and the shift of life becoming a means to life. 2. What is a “politics of recognition” according to Coulthard? When does the shift to a politics of recognition happen, according to Coulthard, and what does it involve? Why is he critical of this approach to Indigenous politics? What alternative does he find in Fanon’s work instead of a politics of recognition? Further, how does Coulthard interact with Marx? What are his critiques of Marx (when it comes to his understanding of colonialism) and how does Coulthard resolve/respond to these problems? 3. According to Foucault, what are the three primary forms of control in modern power/disciplinary power? (Explain each). What is the shift that Foucault finds between classical/traditional theories of sovereignty (disciplinary power) and the new right of the sovereign (biopower)? What does Foucault mean by “biopolitics”? What is racism, according to Foucault? How does the biopolitical state make use of racism?
4. What does Foucault mean by “biopolitics”? What is racism, according to Foucault? How does the biopolitical state make use of racism? In contrast, how does Mbembe describe necropolitics? What is necropower, according to Mbembe? And what are the three characteristics of the production of a necropolitical state/the production of “death worlds” and the “living dead”? (Explain each). Why is Foucault’s biopower an insufficient concept, according to Mbembe? (i.e. What can it not address, or struggle to address?) 5. How do Arruza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser define capitalism? Why? What are the three main contradictions in a capitalist political economy that Arruza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser address in their work? (Please explain each of the three in-depth and detail). What is their feminism for the 99% and how does it try to address these three crises? Why do they argue for a feminism for the 99% rather than neoliberal feminism (what is their critique of neoliberal feminism/the two-
income family)?