Midterm Take Home Exam
The grade for this assignment constitutes 30% of your overall grade.
Submit an online version of the exam on the Canvas course page. Go to Assignments, Midterm Take Home Exam.
ANSWER TWO OF THE QUESTIONS BELOW, USING 750 WORDS FOR EACH QUESTION. Include a word count for each of your questions.
Where you have had significant help from secondary sources in understanding and in being able to formulate your answers, acknowledge this in footnotes.
Give a bibliography at the end of your answers, including primary and secondary texts (the word count does not include the bibliography or the footnotes). Avoid quotations longer than one sentence.
- How are bodies made docile according to Foucault? Explain his notion of the docile body with reference to one or more of the disciplinary techniques he examines in “Docile bodies” in Discipline and Punish.
- Foucault argues that disciplinary power uses particular mechanisms to train the human being. Explain at least two techniques, with reference to examples, that he discusses in “The means of correct training” in Discipline and Punish.
- Explain and evaluate Weheliye’s critique of the biopolitical. What does he outline as an alternative to it?
- Hobbes’ commonwealth is a macroanthropos, an artificial man, who saves the many men from themselves. Explain and evaluate Hobbes’ notion of human nature with reference to the generation of the commonwealth.
- Explain and evaluate Foucault’s notion of racism in Chapter 11 of “Society Must Be Defended.”
- Explain and examine Marx’s theory of alienation by referring to “Estranged Labour” in Economic and Political Manuscripts. Do you think Marx’s notions of alienation are still relevant today? Why or why not?
