Please give me constructive feedback
PO 448 SHORT PAPER GUIDELINES [Due 3/13 with 3/23 extension]
PURPOSE: The SP will allow students to "pre-write" the theory section of their final project. This will give students an opportunity to make the necessary adjustments (via my comments/feedback) and then, ideally, cut-and-paste a majority of the SP directly into their final project.
FORMAT: The SP should be ~5-8 pages, double spaced, complete with proper footnotes/citations (detailed below). Moreover, I am expecting nothing less than perfect papers-no typos, spelling, or grammatical errors. Remember, the SP should focus specifically on your theoretical approach. This means there should be NO HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OR ANALYSIS/APPLICATION-save all that for the final project. One possible way of structuring the paper would be:
1. Introduction: 2-3 sentences on your research question (i.e. "This project will examine...Specifically, I will explore..."); then a roadmap of the SP (i.e. "To do so, I will turn to Agamben's conception of biopolitics, Anderson's..."); in total, less than half a page
2. Section 1: 1.5-2 pages on concept #1; remember, you should be writing this as if your reader has not read the original text: isolate the key points (only those that are applicable to your project-not "plot summaries"), pull out the key quotes when needed, and digest the material (i.e. "Therefore, this concept/position/approach is significant because it allows/enables...")
3. Transition to Section 2: 1-2 sentences (i.e. Whereas [concept #1] allows [x], [concept #2] is instructive for the ways it articulates...)
4. Section 2: concept #2; same moves as Section 1
5. Transition to Section 3
6. Section 3: concept #3
7. Conclusion: 3-4 sentences to tie things together (i.e. "Thus, by incorporating [concepts 1, 2, and 3], the final project aims to [???]").
GRADING: The SP comprises 30% of your final project's grade. Successful papers will: 1) provide accurate a presentation of the concepts, 2) build logical arguments, and 3) be delivered in a concise and lucid manner. In order to ensure that the SPs will be written in a professional and academic manner, I will deduct 10 points for each of the following instances:
- Contractions (i.e. can't, I'm, isn't, etc.)
- Uses of generalized pronouns outside of the Intro, conclusion, and transitions (i.e. "we need to..." or "Foucault tells us...")
- Improper footnotes/citations and block quotes (if more than four lines, single space, no quote marks, all lines indented only on the left)
- Semicolons
FOOTNOTES/CITATIONS: Whenever you are drawing from a text-either paraphrasing or pulling a direct quote-you must footnote. Footnote numbers are placed at the end of a sentence, after the punctuation (i.e. "Like this." ). Please use the footnote function-in MSWord, it is: Insert Reference Footnote
For citation guidelines, refer to liu.edu/cwis/CWP/library/workshop/citmla.htm
Drafts for review must be received via RamCT mail before 1pm on Thursday, 3/12.
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I cant get my footnotes to copy over... but all the informaition in my writing was pulled from: Focault, Michel. 1976. "17 March 1976" Society Must Be Defended
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This paper seeks to explore the rationale of contemporary disenfranchisement of the GLBT community. To do so, Michel Focault's theories of biopolitics, racism as a mechanism of power, and disciplines and regulations placed on the individual and population in the pursuit of power will be utilized.
Michel Focault establishes that the modern use of power is not targeted at the individual but rather the population. "Discipline tries to rule a multiplicity of men to the extent that their multiplicity can and must be dissolved into individual bodies that can be kept under surveillance, trained, used, and, if need be, punished." Together, men represent "a global mass that is affected by overall processes characteristic of birth, death, production, illness and so on." Biopolitics thus emerges, as the State seeks first to understand these processes and then to control it, in an effort to regularize society. "Regulatory mechanisms must be established to [create] an equilibrium, maintain an average, [assert] a sort of homeostasis... so as to optimize a state of life." It is in this aim, of the Sovereign-Power to optimize life, which provides the need for fractures in society to be manufactured as a means of justifying the violence needed to create and maintain regularized living conditions.
Racism is a, "... way of separating out the groups that exist within a population", functioning as a means of fracturing society. It is this ideology that is utilized by the sovereign State to justify dehumanizing violence enacted towards subgroups of people within the population. Subjects of the state adhere to the sovereign's prescribed role, which causes a mutation of the ego. The sovereign's prescribed role attributes self-perception with identifying to a particular invented species. All of this provides the ability of the docile subjects of the state to adhere to the ideology that,
The more inferior species die out, the more abnormal individual are eliminated, the fewer degenerates there will be in the species as a whole, and the more I - as a species rather than individual - can live, the stronger I [as a species] will be, the more vigorous I [as a species] will be.
Further, this specifically accents the powerful function of the mechanism of racism enacted by the State. Not only are those whom are regularized accepting of dehumanizing violence towards "the others" within society, but are happy to do so, as it is an improvement upon the species, and thus, their personal existence.
Focault makes the distinction that violence in this description is broader than its literal meaning. The dehumanizing violence enacted by the Sovereign State is also the action of, "exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or, quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on." Violence is therefore, not only the physical brutality which occurs in contemporary society, but also the disenfranchisement and denial of equality. All of this provides a framework by which the plight of the GLBT community can be understood, as it is a community that people identify deviant of prescribed societal regularization codifications (or what is considered normal) and are therefore subjected to institutional and social inequity of a substantially clear and evident nature.
Sexuality is highlighted in Focault's writing because it, "exists at the point where body and population meet... [making it] a matter for discipline, [and] also a matter for regulation." The emphasis upon sexuality is due to its unique position, "between organism and population, between the body and general phenomena" of population trends. Through a medical perspective, sexuality, removed of discipline, results in adverse affects on two levels. The first level is the individual body, which will accumulate disease/s through the practice of sexual deviancy. The second level, is the affect of sexual deviancy upon the population, as debauchery is presumed to impact the heredity of an individual, rippling adverse consequences down through an individual's descendant-line. This adverse affect is referred to as the theory of degeneracy, "given that it is the source of individual diseases and that it is the nucleus of degeneracy." Moreover, "sexuality represents the precise point where the disciplinary and the regulatory, the body and the population, are articulated." The sovereign State places technologies of regulation and discipline upon the body to influence the population, particularly in the context of sexuality. This intentional use of power is purposed to achieve a normalized society which decreases the unpredictable events, which occur in any biological multiplicity, existing outside of the sovereign's control.
Disciplines and regulations placed upon the individual body are purposed to influence and shape society. As no Sovereign Power has the ability to control death, it is in the State's interest to manipulate its subjects so that death, as a reality outside of domination, is limited as much as possible and even made to be invisible. This can be seen in contemporary society, insofar as death has become an extremely private and shameful matter for members of the normalized community. Death is taboo because it stands as a symbolic transition of an individual from the sovereign power of this world to the sovereign power of the next. All power and material objects of the deceased are passed on to their descendants. The entire process of Death has been ritualized, as it has always existed in society. While an inescapable part of life, death has never been dominated by any Sovereign Power, resulting in the Sovereign denying the existence of death, pushing its presence out of the public sphere.
As previously established, sexuality is regularized because of its unique positioning, jointing the individual body to the population. The sovereign enacts power to, "intervene to make life." In this context, power is utilized, "in order to improve life by eliminating accidents, random elements, and deficiencies" that exist in society. More importantly, in this context, death exists as, "the end of life... and of power." Therefore, the established regulations and disciplines in society, for the limiting of unpredictable variables, are essential to the sovereign's further acquisition of power, in spite of death's existence. This provides an understanding of the rational behavior of the sovereign, targeting the GLBT identification with violence. The GLBT existence directly challenges fundamental claims to power and the effort to regularize society.
Through the examination of the motives and power of the sovereign power, a deeper understanding of contemporary contempt for the GLBT community is understood. Biopolitics involves the State attempting to control societal processes that pose possible interruptions of regularized society and the prescribed quality of life it affords. By use of the mechanisms of racism, the State is capable of violence that is perceived as just and for the benefit of the invented species, which docile subjects conform too and advocate for. As the regularization of society persists to take form, sexuality and death are increasingly regulated and disciplined, creating an alternate reality for docile subjects where death is over looked and sexuality has established societal expectations. This final project aims to identify the rational heterosexism that persists in contemporary society, resulting in social and institutional oppression for people with identities outside of the dominant prescribed roles of regulated social order.
