Fall  2006           

Prof. Mayfair Yang

 

Sovereignty & Governmentality:  Religious Dimensions

 

Religious Studies 273

Wed 12:00 – 2:50 pm, 3041 HSSB

 

One of the consequences of modernity is that we tend to think of religion and state politics as two separate categories, each with their separate institutions, imaginaries, and practices, and forget that throughout most of human history, they were intimately linked and mutually embedded.  Indeed, modernity in the form of secularization can be thought of as the sundering of this connection, and the expansion of the political sphere at the expense of the contraction of the religious.  At the same time, we have also witnessed the increasing attempts, sometimes from within the state, and other times from without, to reconnect these two spheres, often with explosive results.

 

This seminar will take as a point of departure, two modes of power posited by Michel Foucault, “sovereignty” and “governmentality,” and explore their workings in various religious systems around the world and in different historical moments.  Sovereignty is that vertical top-down mode of power that orients itself around the central figure of the monarch, a juridical system, force, and territory, and its war-making and punishments often associate it with blood and death.  Governmentality, which Foucault thought was gaining ascendancy in modernity, exercises power through the enhancement and nurturing of life and population, and is focused on the individual subject and self-making.  This seminar will assess the applicability of these two modes of power for an understanding of political religions and religious politics, and for examining the stubborn persistence of the sacred-political in modernity.  We will also debate Foucault’s proposition that sovereignty has lost ground in modernity.

 

Theoretical readings include Michel Foucault, Georges Bataille, Claude Lefort, Giorgio Agamben, Bruce Lincoln, Talal Asad, and Rene Girard.  Historical and anthropological readings include David Carrasco on Aztec state sacrifices, Michael Taussig on popular religion in post-colonial Venezuela, Helen Hardacre on Japanese Shinto fascism, Stephan Feuchtwang on popular religion in Taiwan, Paolo Prodi on the Catholic Church in early modern Europe, Angela Zito on Chinese imperial state rituals, Mayfair Yang on the cult of Mao in China, Talal Asad on medieval Christian monastic disciplines and modern tortures, Purnima Mankekar on Hindu nationalism, and Saba Mahmood on the women’s piety movement in contemporary Egypt.

 

Books to Purchase:

 

Foucault, Michel.

2003    “Society Must Be Defended”:  Lectures at the College de France, 1975-76.  David Macey, trans.  New York:  Picador.

 

Agamben, Giorgio.

1998    Homo Sacer:  Sovereign Power and Bare Life.  Daniel Heller-Roazen, trans.  Stanford University Press.

 

Bataille, Georges.

1993    The Accursed Share.  Vol. III.:  Sovereignty.  New York:  Zone Books.

 

Taussig, Michael.

1996    The Magic of the State.  New York:  Routledge.

 

Carrasco, David.

2000    City of Sacrifice : Violence From the Aztec Empire to the Modern Americas.  Boston:  Beacon Press.

 

Lincoln, Bruce.

2006    Holy Terrors:  Thinking about Religion After September 11.  2nd ed.  University of Chicago Press.

 

Religious Studies 273 Xerox Reader, available at The Alternative Copy Shop, Isla Vista

 

Grading:

 

There will be a midterm paper of six to seven (6-7) double-spaced pages required for the class, and a final paper of fourteen (14) double-spaced pages, based on the student’s own research interest, involving both independent research as well as integration of some of the class readings.  The midterm paper is worth 30% of the final course grade, the final paper is worth 50%, and the student’s oral class performance is worth 20%.

 

Instructor Office Hours:

 

Tues. and Thurs. 3:30 – 4:30 pm                       3084 HSSB

Office telephone:  893-8226

Instructor email:  yangm@religion.ucsb.edu

 

 

Course Syllabus

 

 

Week 1           (10/4/06)

 

Introduction to the course

 

Week 2           (10/11/06)

Foucault on Sovereignty, Governmentality, & Biopower

 

Hobbes, Thomas.

1998    Leviathan.  Oxford University Press.  (1651). (Part I:  Chaps. 10-13; Part II:  Chaps. 17-19)

   

Foucault, Michel.

2003    “Society Must Be Defended”:  Lectures at the College de France, 1975-76.  David Macey, trans.  New York:  Picador.  (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 11, and Course Summary).

 

Foucault, Michel.

1991    “Governmentality”  in The Foucault Effect:  Studies in Governmentality.  Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, Peter Miller, eds.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press.

 

Foucault, Michel.

1978    The History of Sexuality.  Vol. 1.  Robert Hurley, trans.  New York:  Random House.  (pp. 81-159).

 

Suggested Readings:

Dean, Mitchell.

1999        Governmentality:  Power and Rule in Modern Society.  Sage Publications.

 

(website:  Foucault Resources):  http://www.michel-foucault.com/

 

(peer-reviewed electronic journal:  Foucault Studies):

http://www.foucault-studies.com/index1.html

 

 

Week 3           (10/18/06)

Agamben on Sovereignty & Biopower in Modernity

 

Agamben, Giorgio.

1998    Homo Sacer:  Sovereign Power and Bare Life.  Daniel Heller-Roazen, trans.  Stanford University Press. 

 

Suggested Readings:

Ojakangas, Mika.

2005    “Impossible Dialogue on Bio-power:  Agamben and Foucault” in Foucualt Studies, no. 2, May.

http://www.foucault-studies.com/no2/ojakangas1.pdf

Mbembe, Achille.

1992    “The Banality of Power and the Aesthetics of Vulgarity in the Postcolony”  in Public Culture, vol. 4, no. 2, Srping.

 

Week 4           (10/25/06)

Violence, Ritual, and the State

 

Girard, Rene.

1977    Violence and the Sacred.  Patrick Gregory, trans.  Johns Hopkins University Press. (Chaps. 1 and 11)

 

Carrasco, David.

2000    City of Sacrifice : Violence From the Aztec Empire to the Modern Americas.  Boston:  Beacon Press.  (Chaps.  1, 2, 3, 5)

 

Zito, Angela.

1997    Body & Brush : Grand Sacrifice As Text/Performance in Eighteenth-Century China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  (Chaps. 5, 6)

 

Foucault, Michel.

1977    “The Body of the Condemned”  in Discipline and Punish:  the Birth of the Prison.  Alan Sheridan, trans.  Vintage Books.

 

Asad, Talal.

2003    “Reflections on Cruelty and Torture”  in Formations of the Secular:  Christianity, Islam, Modernity.  Stanford University Press.

 

Week 5           (11/1/06)

Modernity and the Persistence of the Sacred-Political

 

Lefort, Claude.

1988    “The Permanence of the Theologico-Political?”  in Democracy and Political Theory.  David Macey, trans.  University of Minnesota Press.  (1981).

 

Prodi, Paolo.

1987    The Papal Prince:  One Body and Two Souls – the Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe.  Cambridge University Press.  (Chaps. 1, 2)

 

Hardacre, Helen.

1989    Shinto and the State, 1868-1988.  Princeton University Press.  (Chaps. 1,  4,  pp. 150-153)

 

Mankekar, Purnima.

1999    “Mediating Modernities:  the Ramayan and the Creation of Community and Nation”  in Screening Culture, Viewing Politics:  an Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India.  Duke University Press.  (Chap. 4).

 

Yang, Mayfair.

1994    “A Sweep of Red:  State Subjects and the Cult of Mao”  in Gifts, Favors, and Banquets.  Cornell University Press.

 

Suggested Readings:

Schmitt, Carl.

2006    Political Theology:  Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty.  George Schwab, trans.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press. (1922)

 

Week 6           (11/8/06)

Modernity and the Persistence of the Sacred-Political

 

Foucault, Michel.

2005    “What are the Iranians Dreaming About?”  in Foucault and the Iranian Revolution.  Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson.  University of Chicago Press.

 

Afary, Janet and Kevin B. Anderson. 

2005    “The Visits to Iran and the Controversies with ‘Atoussa H.’ and Maxine Rodinson”  in Foucault and the Iranian Revolution.  Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson.  University of Chicago Press.

 

Asad, Talal.

2003    “Secularism, Nation-State, Religion”  in Formations of the Secular:  Christianity, Islam, Modernity.  Stanford University Press.

 

Lincoln, Bruce.

2006    Holy Terrors:  Thinking about Religion After September 11.  2nd ed.  University of Chicago Press.  Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6

   


Week 7           (11/15/06)

 

Midterm Papers Due in class – no readings this week

 

Week 8           (11/29/06)

Religious Governmentalities and Disciplines

 

Foucault, Michel.

1997        “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom” 

“On the Genealogy of Ethics:  an Overview of Work in Progress”  in Ethics:   Subjectivity and Truth.  New Press.

 

Asad, Talal.

1993    “On Discipline and Humility in Medieval Christian Monasticism”  in Genealogies of Religion:  Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam.  Johns Hopkins University Press.

 

Mahmood, Saba.

2005    “The Subject of Freedom”  in The Politics of Piety:  the Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject.  Princeton University Press.

 

Week 9           (12/6/06)

Georges Bataille on Sovereignty

 

Bataille, Georges.

1993    The Accursed Share.  Vol. III.  New York:  Zone Books.  (pp. 197-372).

 

Week 10         (12/13/06)

Popular Religion:  Subversive Mimicry or Medium of State Cosmology?

 

Taussig, Michael.

1996    The Magic of the State.  New York:  Routledge.  (whole book)

 

Feuchtwang, Stephan.

2001        Popular Religion in China:  The Imperial Metaphor.  Richmond:  Curzon Press. (Chaps. 2, 3)

 

 

14-page Final Papers Due:    Tues.  December 12, 5:00 pm

                                                            In Instructor’s Dep’t mailbox