Politics of Violence

Catalog description

This class offers an analysis of the role of the state in perpetuating, legitimizing, and facilitating political, racial, and gender-based violence worldwide. We will explore the connections and effects of nationalism, militarism, and heteropatriarchy (as structural and ideological elements of the state) as well as neoliberal assaults and practices in the normalization of violence against dissidents, incarcerated populations, refugees, workers, and indigenous communities. We will engage in a theoretical discussion on the salience of particular ideational and material experiences of race, ethnicity, indigeneity, gender and queer identities, and political affiliation in rendering state-sponsored violence and torture thinkable.