What is the relation between media, body techniques and technologies, and politics? How and where does this relation become manifested? In this seminar, we will employ “technopolitics” as a perspective for examining the merging of technology and political practice in the production of power structures. We will utilize studies from the history of technology, science and technology studies (STS), and environmental history to map changing degree of that merge. The seminar’s main site of investigation will be the more-than-human body. We will explore post-humanist approaches and consult various historical and recent examples that illustrate how the humanimal body and its residues have been important for the maintenance and dismantling of such power structures. Bridging approaches from animal studies, the history of the body, and feminist theory, we will explore how labor, production, and reproduction of both humans and animals have been managed within particular technopolitical contexts, and examine the kinds of cultural work these bodies were supposed to be performing.
