Professor Macarena Gómez-Barris
Spring Semester 2012
Mondays, 2-4:50pm
Office Hours: Thursdays, 12-2pm
My office: KAP 462, back office
Email:
SOC 420: Sociology of Violence
This course is designed to give students theoretical, conceptual, and analytical skills in the study of violence, its legacies, and how societies approach the problematics of violence. We start with a concept of violence that is rooted in the notion of the colonial difference and the way certain theoretical traditions, such as the Black radical tradition, studies of colonialism and post-colonialism, and native studies, have contributed to a profound analytics of violent societies and their ongoing legacies. The common thread through these traditions is to underscore the relationship of race to a global project that has both constituted difference and produced systems of violence such as transatlantic slavery, settler colonialism, and a permanent condition of war. The course will work with Fanonian categories of analysis and Latin American critical scholarship to understand how Black and Brown bodies are produced as expendable in various historical and contemporary contexts. We will analyze a number of global cases to situate our discussion, mostly focused on Central and South America, but also trying to understand permanent conditions of genocide and war in semi-colonial and settler colonial contexts, especially for indigenous peoples in the Americas.
We explore a number of ethical concerns regarding violence and look at colonial and modern relationships in relation to modernity and colonialism. How do societies represent violence as efforts to express and/or suture the wounds of the past? What are the connections between intimate and broader forms of violence? How do nations address, support, condone or erase violence through institutional policies, laws, and processes? What does an international and historical comparative perspective on questions of violence offer us? How do issues of race, class, gender and sexuality inform collective violence and its effects? How do societies pay tribute to and commemorate the devastation wrought on racialized populations?
Our objective this semester is to work through concepts and theories, and, examine specific cases of violence, its aftermath, its conditions and what violence produces. By the end of the course, you will have the conceptual tools you need to think through questions and puzzles of collective violence, allowing you to apply these concepts to the final paper/exam. My aim beyond this course is that you will improve your understanding and awareness of the history and sociology of violence, and analysis about the presence of violence in our world today and beyond. I also hope that the course will spawn your interest in working on the intellectual and concrete issues of violence (and its devastating effects) towards a better future society. This could mean a career in human rights, law, sociology, social work, non-profit work, governmental organizations, or just to develop your capacity, knowledge, and participation as a global citizen.
Requirements: Your grade will be determined by:
1) Midterm evaluation (30%). This will be a take home midterm evaluation during the sixth week where you will be given a choice of concepts to define and essay questions from which to respond and will be due at the beginning of class during the eighth week.
2) Facilitated Readings (20%). Since this will be a small, seminar style class, you will be responsible, three times during the semester, for one week’s worth of readings. You will prepare a short summary of course readings, pull out useful concepts, apply the concepts to a case that you investigate, and prepare short 1-2 page responses to be presented to the class. It’s your choice if you’d like to add additional reading for your week.
3) Project-Based Work (20%). You will individually explore and present on a topic of interest to you, either during the tenth or the eleventh weeks. Each student will include various segments of the presentation, including historical background, visual material, handouts, bibliographic references, powerpoint presentation, conceptual applications, and discussion questions. Each person will choose two short academic readings ahead of time that will need to be approved by me. These readings will be made available to other students, given in class ahead of time (depending on the length of the reading) or put on Blackboard. After the presentation is over you will be asked to write up an individual reflection about what you learned, what your specific task was, and to reflect on the process. This will be a three page typed reflection piece about your experience that will complete your project based work.
4) 8-10 page Final Exam Paper (20%). You will be given one week to write a final exam paper based on the prompts that come out of course lectures and materials. Keeping up with the reading throughout the course will be essential to a strong performance on the final exam paper. The Final Exam will be the same structure as the midterm, and will be due at the assigned time on the course schedule. Please note that no late final exams, except for medical emergencies, will be accepted.
5) Attendance and Participation (10%). You are required to discuss course readings in class, and to attend regularly. I will take attendance during each class, and since we only meet once per week, you will not pass the course with more than two unexcused absences. Part of participation in this course is five to ten minutes of discussion at the beginning of the course, tracking current events in relationship to the theme of society and violence. Therefore, it is a requirement of the course that you read The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, or The Wall Street Journal on a daily basis. If you do not receive the paper at home, you can read the paper online each morning. Please come to class having digested daily news and events.
Required Books:
Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother, 2006 (Amazon)
On Violence, Hannah Arendt, 1970 (USC Bookstore)
The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon, 1963 (USC Bookstore)
When States Kill, Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror, University of Texas, Austin, Eds. Cecilia Menjívar and Néstor Rodríguez, 2005 (USC Bookstore)
I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, Editor Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, London and New York: Verso, 1991 (USC Bookstore)
Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence, Macarena Gómez-Barris, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009 (USC Bookstore)
On-line / Blackboard Course Readings: All of the articles will be available either at the given URL or through Blackboard at least five days prior to our class meeting. I may add or swap a few readings as we go to keep it fresh!
Note about how to reach me: The best way to communicate with me is by e-mail. It is fine to write me with your questions, comments, and analysis or to point out a relevant article that you see in the newspapers, and so forth. Better yet, bring it in to share. Please write short emails that concretely address your point, comment, or question with SOC 420 in subject line. Also, sending me an email about your absence is courteous, but it does not count as an excused absence. Like many professors, I am flooded with email. Thus, I will respond to you in a timely manner, but not always instantly. If for some reason I don’t respond within 24 hours, please feel free to email me again. Lastly, I do not accept papers electronically, even with excused absences.
COURSE SCHEDULE
Week 1 (1/9): Framing Violence
Introduction, Analytics of Violence, and Course Objectives
Syllabus Review, Course Business
Fred Moten, “The New International of Insurgent Feeling”
http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1130
Special Event Required: Thursday, January 12, 7:00 pm, Omar Barghouti, Angela Davis, and Fred Moten: “’Our South Africa Moment’: Divestment From Apartheid In South Africa And Israel,'" Taper Hall of the Humanities, Rm. 101, University of Southern California, co-sponsored by American Studies & Ethnicity.
Week 2 (1/16): HOLIDAY: Framing Violence II
Internalized Violence, Symbolic Violence, Material Violence. What is the role of the subconscious during and after violence? We explore a psychoanalytical and cultural framework for the effects of violence, intimate violence, and representation.
Sigmund Freud, “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through” (Blackboard pdf)
Sigmund Freud, “Return of the Repressed” (Blackboard pdf)
Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco and Antonius C. G. M. Robben, “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Violence and Trauma” (Blackboard pdf)
Week 3 (1/23): Colonialism and Violence
What is the historical arc of planetary violence? How is it racialized? How does it get encoded in legal systems and daily life? What kinds of anti-colonial struggles have tried to counter violence?
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Glen Coulthardt, http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2006/Coulthard.pdf
Week 4 (1/30): Modernity and Violence
Are violence and modernity co-produced? How is violence integral to modernity and capitalism? How is it that the Shoah takes place in the heart of civilizing Europe? How do Arendt’s and Fanon’s concepts of violence compare?
Hannah Arendt, On Violence
Elizabeth Frazer and Kimberly Hutchings, “Politics and Violence: Arendt Contra Fanon,”
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/cpt/journal/v7/n1/full/9300328a.html
Week 5 (2/6): Settler Colonialism
We return to colonialism to understand the indigenous question. We explore settler colonialism as a system of land occupation, genocidal violence, and racialization. What kinds of systems of violence are specific to native populations?
Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/89.pdf
J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Selections on Blackboard)
Week 6 (2/13): Slavery
What is transatlantic slavery? How does it transform the Americas? How do we know and attempt to understand the master/slave dialectic and the effects of slavery?
Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother
Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection (Blackboard pdf)
Assignment: Midterm Handed Out
Week 7 (2/20): HOLIDAY / State Terror I
Does colonial violence exist in modernity? How does the modern state perpetuate genocidal logics? What does the testimonial offer us? What is the role of the US Empire in the logic of genocide?
Rigoberta Menchú, I, Rigoberta Menchú
Beggar in Menjívar and Rodríguez, “The Path of State Terror,” pp. 252-277
POV, “Peru’s War on Terror” (on line interview)
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2006/falloffujimori/special_goldman.html
Week 8 (2/27): State Terror II
This week we take a broader perspective on structural violence in the Inter-State system. What are the conditions of dependency in a hemispheric context? How do states corroborate together to produce interlocking systems of violence?
Menjívar and Rodríguez, “Introduction,” pp. 3-28
Menjívar and Rodríguez, “Operation Condor,” pp. 28-58
Kruckewitt in Menjívar and Rodríguez, “US Militarization of Honduras,” pp. 170-197
Lauria-Santiago in Menjívar and Rodríguez, “The Culture and Politics of State Terror and Repression in El Salvador,” pp. 85-114
MIDTERM DUE
Week 9 (3/5): Memory and Representation
How do social movements respond to state terror? What kinds of witnessing practices emerge? How do people produce agency after catastrophe?
Gómez-Barris, Macarena, Where Memory Dwells
Yoneyama, Lisa, Hiroshima Traces (Selections on Blackboard)
SPRING BREAK (no class 3/12)
Week 10 (3/19): Collective Violence (Individual Project Presentations)
READINGS TO BE ANNOUNCED AND DISTRIBUTED BY PRESENTERS
U.S./Mexico Border Violence
Darfur Genocide
Domestic Violence
El Salvador Civil War
Police Brutality (US and/or Brazil)
Week 11 (3/26): Collective Violence (Group Project II)
READINGS TO BE ANNOUNCED AND DISTRIBUTED BY PRESENTERS
U.S./Mexico Border Violence
Darfur Genocide
Domestic Violence
El Salvador Civil War
Police Brutality (US and/or Brazil)
Week 12 (4/2): Torture, War, and Representation
Documentary Films, Photographic Evidence, Visual Art. This week we explore the question of representation in genocide, wars, and torture, thinking carefully about the role of aesthetics and mediations in our discussions. How can we approximate terror and the experience of torture?
Marita Sturken, “The Wall, the Screen, and the Image: The Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial,” (on-line)
http://beauty.gmu.edu/AVT307/AVT307- 001/Marita%20Sturken%20The%20Wall,%20The%20Screen%20and%20The%2 0Image.pdf
Dir. Alex Gibney, Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)
Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory” (on-line) http://www.columbia.edu/~mh2349/papers/generation.pdf
Lisa Hajjar, “Banning Torture Affirms America’s Humanity” (on-line)
http://www.merip.org/newspaper_opeds/opedLisaHajjar111905.html
Week 13 (4/9): Global Wars
In the era of digital technology, what kinds of wars emerge? What do we mean by a permanent war? How does September 11 mark a critical moment of permanent war? Is there something qualitatively distinct about this new period?
Readings to be announced.
Mari Matsuda, “Among the Mourners who Mourn” (Blackboard)
Abou El Fadel in September 11 in History, pp. 70-111 (Blackboard)
Week 14 (4/16): Feminicide
How are female bodies targeted in state campaigns? How is war gendered? What sites of global capitalism and drug trafficking particularly concentrate war?
Rosa Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano, Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas (Selections on Blackboard).
Pedro H. Albuquerque and Prasad R. Vemala, “A Statistical Evaluation of Femicide Rates in Mexican Cities along the US – Mexico Border” (on-line) http://texascenter.tamiu.edu/pdf_br/v7/v7-Albuquerque.pdf
Week 15 (4/23): Returning to Fanonian Analysis
Now that we’ve studied many sites of war, terror, and militarization, what is to be done? What kinds of analysis and efforts help us undo the underpinnings of violence? Do we now have a more complex toolkit for understanding violence and its effects?
Nelson Armando Torres, Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity
(Selections on Blackboard)
http://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/00014885.html
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/10/the-impact-of-the-wall-on-palestinian-life.html
Assignment: Final Paper Prompt Handed Out
Week 16 (4/30): Exit
Conclusion/Review
Final Paper will be due in my box in Kaprielian Hall at Final Exam time listed on USC course schedule.
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