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Oct 31, 2024
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Goucher College 2024-2025 Undergraduate Catalogue
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PHL 325 - Neoliberalism and Biopolitics (4) This course will investigate the concept of biopolitics, a term coined by Michel Foucault to describe techniques used by the modern state to transform the basic biological elements of human life into political strategies. Starting in the eighteenth century, aggregated features of human communities became knowable through new analytic techniques associated with the human sciences and served as the basis for predicting, and thereby governing, entire populations. Guided by the writings of Foucault, we will consider the consequences of these developments, following them into the twentieth century where, together with the economic policy known as neo-liberalism, they come to dominate the practice of government, harnessing freedom itself as an instrument of control. Prerequisite: Either one philosophy course or permission of the instructor.
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