The course aims to provide students with the critical-hermeneutical tools to understand and interpret the main modern political categories and to reflect on the processes of victimization and construction of racial hatred in contemporary society in the light of the historical examples analyzed. These tools of philosophical-political analysis are aimed at facilitating the understanding and treatment of complex and recurrent social phenomena of labeling, marginalization, or victimization, both in the context of knowledge and in the professional one.

The first part of the course deals with the issue of political evil, with specific reference to the life-power relationship, the construction of social order, and the main modern political-philosophical categories (sovereignty, property, freedom). In the second part, the considerations developed in the first one are contextualized concerning the development of theories and myths of the race from the second half of the 18th century to Nazism. Critical reflection focuses on the processes of victimization and "construction" of deviant or abnormal alterity, as well as on the problem of obedience and mass consent.

Extended program.

-Biopower and biopolitics

-The immune paradigm

-The political categories of modernity: sovereignty

-The victimary paradigm - Girard, and Freud

-The powerful paranoid - Canetti

-The political categories of modernity: property and freedom

-Biopower in Nietzsche

-Compensatio - Gehlen, and Plessner

- Sovereign exception

-Homo sacer

-Bare life - Benjamin and Kafka

-The myth of the race: theoretical origins and history of thought

-Anti-Semitism and totalitarianism

-The banality of evil

-The abnormal

-Modernity, racism, rationality

-Tanatopolitics and eugenics

-The field as a biopolitical paradigm of the modern

-Genocidal policies in the twentieth century

None.

The teaching material prepared by the lecturer in addition to recommended textbooks (such as for instance slides, lecture notes, exercises, bibliography) and communications from the lecturer specific to the course can be found inside the Moodle platform › blended.uniurb.it

Supplementary seminars and other activities of possible interest to students will be communicated in class at the beginning of the course.

Teaching

Interactive frontal lessons.

Attendance

Study of the indicated texts. 

Course books

-Agamben G., Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita, Einaudi, Torino, 2005.

-Castorina R., Governare l’inumano. Miti e politiche della razza, biopotere, eugenetica, Aras Edizioni, Fano, 2011.

A book chosen from the following:

-Esposito R., Immunitas. Protezione e negazione della vita, Einaudi, Torino, 2020.

-Esposito R., Bíos. Biopolitica e filosofia, Einaudi, Torino, 2004 (chapters 1,2,3,4).

Assessment

The learning verification will take place through an individual oral test. The assessment will focus on the knowledge of the contents of the textbooks and any other teaching materials provided by the teacher. The ability to re-elaborate and critically argue the topics and the property of language (mastery of the disciplinary technical language) will be particularly valued.

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.

Teaching

Individual study of the course books.

Attendance

Study of the indicated texts. 

Course books

-Agamben G., Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita, Einaudi, Torino, 2005.

-Castorina R., Governare l’inumano. Miti e politiche della razza, biopotere, eugenetica, Aras Edizioni, Fano, 2011.

A book chosen from the following:

-Esposito R., Immunitas. Protezione e negazione della vita, Einaudi, Torino, 2020.

-Esposito R., Bíos. Biopolitica e filosofia, Einaudi, Torino, 2004 (chapters 1,2,3,4).

Assessment

The learning verification will take place through an individual oral test. The assessment will focus on the knowledge of the contents of the textbooks and any other teaching materials provided by the teacher. The ability to re-elaborate and critically argue the topics and the property of language (mastery of the disciplinary technical language) will be particularly valued.

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.

The student can request to sit the final exam in English with an alternative bibliography.