Political Philosophy: Politics, Gender, and Race

Foucault argues that the role of the sovereign in the contemporary polity is to manage, and decide who will be forced to lives and who will be allowed to die. Is this role of the sovereign any different from polities of centuries past? How is citizenship construed and managed throughout the history of political theory? How do gender, race, and ethnicity manifest themselves in "universalist" political theories? Can liberalism tolerate differences or does it attempt to annihilate them in subtle ways? Are some populations valorized in order to legitimate the vilification and dehumanization of others? In this course, we will explore the dominant ideas of political philosophers from the 16th to the 19th centuries. This course will be a prerequisite for the 20th century Political Philosophy and the Critical Race Theory courses that I will teach in ensuing semesters. This course will be reading-, writing-, and theory- intensive. MCP, PRS, REA, WRI