"Foucault, Geopower, and the Transformation of the Earth" (3/3)

The Foucault Society, NYC

2011 Colloquium Series: New Research in Foucault Studies

Please join us for the first colloquium in our new series:

Stephanie Clare

"Foucault, Geopower, and the Transformation of the Earth"

Thursday, March 3, 2011

7:00-9:30pm

CUNY Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5409

New York, NY

Abstract:

This paper introduces an analysis of "geopower"--the force relations that transform the earth--by reading Foucault's Discipline and Punish and Security, Territory, Population alongside the archive of Canadian settler colonialism, specifically the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the nineteenth century. Geopower physically transforms the earth through techniques such as urban planning, architecture, engineering, agriculture, and surveying--as well as digging, logging, and marking territory. Its analysis demonstrates that power relations are not only operative between humans: multiple forms of life transform the earth. Although geopower subtends both biopower and sovereign power, it is a repressed presence in Foucault's writing, perhaps because it does not have humans as its target. This analysis therefore puts pressure on Foucauldian understandings of power.

Stephanie Clare is a PhD candidate in Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. Her dissertation, "Earthly Encounters: Readings in Poststructuralism, Feminist Theory, and Canadian Settler Colonialism," touches upon feminist, queer, and postcolonial theory, twentieth-century French philosophy, and settler colonial studies. She has published articles in Hypatia and Exit Nine, and has received grants from SSHRC and FQRSC.

About the Colloquium Series:
The Foucault Society's Colloquium Series provides a forum for new research and works-in-progress, and an opportunity for both junior and senior scholars to share new work with a friendly, supportive audience of colleagues.

To RSVP, please send an e-mail to Shifra Diamond, Colloquium Chair, at: foucaultsocietyorg@gmail.com.

About the Foucault Society:
The Foucault Society is an independent, non-profit educational organization offering a variety of forums dedicated to critical study of the ideas of Michel Foucault (1926-1984) within a contemporary context.

Website: www.foucaultsociety.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12929420844

E-mail: foucaultsocietyorg@gmail.com

**For directions to the CUNY Graduate Center, please see: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/about_gc/directions.htm .