FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

POLITICS

COURSE UNIT OUTLINE 2013/14

POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity
Semester: 1
Credits: 20





WARNING: Be aware that this course contains images some might find
disturbing.
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Lecturers

Dr Andreja Zevnik (convener)

Room: 4.060 Arthur Lewis Building
Telephone: (0161) 2754899
Email: andreja.zevnik@manchester.ac.uk

Office hours: Mondays, 4 5 and Tuesdays, 10 - 11.30
Need to be booked via SOHOL at
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/intranet/ug/sohol/


Dr Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet

Room : 4.010 Arthur Lewis Building
Telephone: (0161) 2754877
Email: emmanuel-pierre.guittet@manchester.ac.uk
http://emmanuelpierreguittet.com

Office hours: Tuesdays, 10 12


Administrator: Julie Tierney and Chantel Riley, UG Office G.001 Arthur Lewis Building

Lectures: Mondays, 1-3pm; venue Humanities Brid St. G33 (weeks 2-3, 5-12)
Crawford House TH 2 (week 4)

Reading Week: October 28 November 3 2013

Tutorials: Allocate yourself to a tutorial group using the Student System.
Mode of assessment: Tutorial presentation/participation (15%)
1500 words review (20%)
3500 word essay (65%)

***IMPORTANT INFORMATION PLEASE READ***

Review hand in date: Monday, November 11 2013, 2pm, Arthur Lewis Foyer
Essay hand in date: Monday, January 13 2014, 2pm, Arthur Lewis Foyer


Communication: Students must read their University e-mails regularly, as important information will
be communicated in this way.
Examination period: 13/1/2014 26/1/2014
12/5/2014 8/6/2014
Re-sit examination period: 18/8/2014 31/8/2014
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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POLI32501
Politics of Obscenity

COURSE OVERVIEW

The course will provide advanced theoretical, empirical and methodological engagement with topics
that due to their traumatic, disturbing or in any other way ab-normal appearance remain
unrepresented or under-theorised in political and international arena. It will be divided into three
sections. The first section will discuss theoretical approaches helpful in studying obscene,
excluded or invisible in political and international sphere. The second section will discuss the
various material manifestations of obscenity; and the final section will re-introduce the obscene
moment to international political sphere.


COURSE AIMS

The course unit aims to:

Introduce students to the side of politics that commonly remains unrepresented.
Examine a variety of political, social and religious imagery to identify that which commonly
remains unrepresented in international political domain.
Engage and consider theoretical and conceptual challenges when dealing with issue that political
scholarship know nothing or very little about or are for other reasons (obscenity, profanity,
trauma) difficult to access.
Present students with critical methodologies and methods for the study of international politics.
Introduce new spaces of political analysis such as the body, materiality, imagery and broaden
the study to disciplines such as sociology, law, philosophy and anthropology.
Develop students oral skills (through general discussion), team-work skills (through a seminar
group work), written skills (through the assessed essay and poster), research skills (from the use
and assessment of material from an array of sources), and critical and analytical skills.


COURSE OBJECTIVES

On completion of this unit successful students will be able to demonstrate:
The ability to question predominant representations of political and historical events and
identify and assess the importance of that which is excluded from political representations
and identify reasons for their exclusion;
The ability to understand and critically assess processes of commemoration and
remembering the past;
The ability to evaluate and critically assess the normative arguments surrounding the
obscene in politics.
The ability to apply the arguments and approaches studied to real and hypothetical cases.
Oral, teamwork, written, and research skills.



POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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COURSE OUTLINE

Week 1: Introduction - what is and is NOT politics of obscenity?
Week 2: Perverted curiosity - transgression and taboo, theoretical remarks
Week 3: Ghosts, zombies, walking dead impurity, modernity, anxiety
Week 4: Seductions of violence? The murderer, the terrorist, and the soldier
Week 5: Seductions of voyeurism? Spaces of the abject
Week 6: Law, exception and the excess
Week 7: The display of violence: genocide, torture, rape
Week 8: The display of death and the commemoration of horror
Week 9: Conclusion: the seen, the unseen and the off-scene

COURSE ORGANISATION

Lectures

The course will start with an introductory lecture in week one which will be followed up by eight
two-hour interactive lectures and a wrap up session at the end. Lecture attendance is not
compulsory, but failure to attend will mean that you get less benefit out of your tutorials and
ultimately that you perform less well on the course.

PowerPoint slides will be available to download from the course unit Blackboard site. Remember
however that merely consulting the slides will not prepare you adequately for the successful
completion of this course.

Tutorials

Each tutorial will begin with a 10min discussion of the readings allocated for the particular week; this
will be followed by a 20minute presentation, and a 20minute discussion and seminar leading. The
presentation and discussion will be a responsibility of the student(s) covering the selected topic. The
presentations will begin in Week Two. Further instructions on the format of the presentation,
guidance on what is expected from you and the individual selection of the topics will be done in
Week One. Each student is expected to come to the tutorial fully prepared; you should be familiar
with the lecture material that corresponds to the relevant seminar and read at least three readings
from the allocated reading list. If you encounter problems or have questions on readings verbalise
those problems into questions and ask them at the beginning of each seminar. Seminars are there to
help you understand the discussed material. Adequate preparation is always the best way of getting
a good mark.

Attendance of tutorials is compulsory. If you know in advance that you will not be able to attend a
particular tutorial make sure you email you tutor as soon as possible to explain your absence.

Reading lists: each topic has an extensive reading list addressing the weekly topic from a variety of
perspectives. You are expected to choose at least three readings in preparation for the seminar. As
indicated, reading lists also overlap, thus for example readings listed for week 4 can be useful for
discussions in week 6 or 7. Also, readings vary - those more theoretical and historical will help you
understand those that are more empirical (in other words, they will help you identify the obscene
elements of the examples discussed).
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Reading

There is no text that covers the range of issues addressed in this course. However, there are a
number of books which explore many of them, although they either lack the engagement with
empirical detail of the course or the concern with the ethical.

Bosteels, Bruno Marx and Freud in Latin America (London: Verso, 2012)
Douglas, Mary Purity and Danger: an analysis of pollution and taboo (London: Routledge, 2002).
Douglas, Mary Natural Symbols: Exploration in Cosmology (London: Routledge, 2003).
Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison (London, Penguin: 1991).
Klossowski, Pierre Sade My Neighbour (Quartet Books, 1992).
Kristeva, Julia Powers of Horrors: An essay on abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
Minkkinen, Panu Sovereignty, Knowledge, Law (Abington: Glasshouse Press, 2009).
Santner. Eric, The Royal Remains: the peoples two bodies and the endgames of sovereignty
(University of Chicago Press, 2011).
Scarry, Elaine, The body in pain: the making and the unmaking of the world (Oxford Paperbacks,
1988).
Shapiro, Michael J. Studies in Trans-disciplinary Method: after the aesthetic turn (London: Routledge,
2012).
Sontag, Susan Against Interpretation and Other Essays (Penguin Classics, 2009).

Many of these books are also listed in the weekly reading lists.



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ASSESSMENT

The course will be assessed in three ways:
1. 3500 word final essay (65%).
2. 1500 word review assignment (20%)
3. 20 min group seminar presentation and 20 min seminar leading (15%).


Essay
Assessed essay of 3500 words (65%) due on Monday, January 13 2014.

Your answers to the selected essay question will be expected to show an understanding of the
wider literature and background material as well as content from the seminars but you are expected
to rely predominantly on research material of their own. Evidence of originality, independent and
critical thinking will be awarded. Marks will be awarded for intellectual insight and development,
evidence of reading and research, questioning of the literature and case study material, and self-
reflection.

General guidelines:
The essay must be typed and double-spaced.
Essays must have a submission form attached to them.
You must submit one copy of your essay.
Essays must conform to departmental guidelines on footnotes and bibliography.
Regulations state that There will be a penalty of 10 points for the first day and 10 points per day
(including weekends) for any assessed essay submitted after the specified submission date,
unless the course convenor grants the student an extension.
Extensions will only be granted by the UG Office under exceptional circumstances. In the case of
illness you must provide a medical certificate. If you have a problem which may affect your
ability to submit your essay on time it is vital that see the course convenor immediately.
Plagiarism is a serious offence. Students should consult the Universitys statement on plagiarism
which can either be found in your programme handbooks or obtained from the Undergraduate
Office (G0.001 Arthur Lewis).

Essay questions will be announced, uploaded on the Blackboard and presented in Week 2 of the
seminars.


Review Piece
You must write a 1500 word review which will count for 20% of your mark. You have to chose one of
the below listed political pieces and write a 1500 words review of it. Reviews are due on:
November 11 2013, 2pm (via a link on BB9 link and a hard copy, UG office on ground floor). You will
have to decide on a piece you wish to review by week 3 and stick to your choice.
The review material is of a diverse nature; thus you will have to devote time to thinking about how
to approach the review in the optimal way. Michael J. Shapiros book, Studies in Trans-disciplinary
Method: after the aesthetic turn (London: Routledge, 2012) will be of great use to you.
The purpose of this exercise is to make you aware of political implication of art broadly conceived; of
ways in which politics informs and impacts art, artistic performance as well as other social media and
internet resources; and to introduce you to other methodological approaches through which
politics is or can be studied. Politics, as we will try to show, is omnipresent and a part of our every
day much more than normally conceived.
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Pieces for review:
Short story: Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony, in The Complete Short Stories (London: Vintage
Classics, 2005): 140 167. [there are a number of editions and collections in which
the story appears, and they are all ok].
Novel: Nanni Balestrini, The Unseen (London: Verso, 2011).
Comic book: The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore, 2003.
Painting: Francis Bacon, The screaming pope of Study after Velazquezs portrait of Pope
Innocent X of 1953 *but you can choose any other portrait from Bacons collection
of papal portraits+
--- Second Version of Triptych 1944 (1988); currently on display in Ashmolean
Gallery, Oxford.
Marlene Dumas, Wall Weeping (2009) and Wall Wailing (2009)
Movie: Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty, Anapurna Pictures, USA, 2012.
Performance Collective: Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) any current or past project by the group
(website: http://www.nskstate.com/; also useful: Alexei Monroe, Interrogation
Machine: Laibach and NSK (MIT Press, 2005) or Alexei Monroe, State of
Emergence: The First NSK Citizens; Congress in Berlin (Plottner Verlag Gmbh, 2011).
Performance: Marina Abramovic, Rhythm 0, 1974 OR Breathing In/Breathing Out, 1978
[accessible on-line, artist personal website, youtube, or as re-enactments etc.]
Actionist Art: Voina, protest actionist art collective, performance A Dick Captured by the FSB,
Liteiny Bridge, St Petersburg, 2010.
Photo: Stanley Greene, Snipers life in Aleppo, Syria 2013 (image 00047972) see:
http://archive.noorimages.com/series/preview.php?UURL=d4679f04fbd9a580ae3
d916acd24f7ec&SECTION=SERIESRESULT&IMGID=00047972
--- The rape of the lands, India 2012 (image 00045436) see:
http://archive.noorimages.com/series/preview.php?UURL=f2c75f9fa2516e5
5accb6a583d60a008&SECTION=SERIESRESULT&IMGID=00045436
Tim Hetherington, Lawyer Francois Roux Cambodia, Toul Sleng Genocide
Museum, see: http://www.magnumphotos.com/image/NYC119964.html
---- Grenade bandolier, Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, see:
http://www.magnumphotos.com/image/NYC116720.html
(FYI currently there is an exhibition of Hetheringtons work at the Open Eye Gallery
in Liverpool)
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Ana Mendieta, Untitled - Self-portrait with blood, 1973 (currently exhibited in Tate
Modern, London see: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/mendieta-
untitled-self-portrait-with-blood-t13354)
Landscape: Landscapes of myths and conspiracy: Area 51, US military site in Nevada
Cultural and historical landscapes: Native American Reservations in the US, see a
map: http://www.nps.gov/nagpra/DOCUMENTS/RESERV.PDF [choose a reservation
site or a tribe and consider its cultural landscape and history of Native Americans].
Landscapes of conflict: Murals, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Landscape of memory: Vietnam War Memorial, Washington DC.
Music: Pussy Riot, Russian feminist punk rock protest group, 2012 performance on the
soleas of Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow, and the subsequent music video
entitled, Punk Prayer Mother of God, Chase Putin Away.
Rammstein, Stripped (remake, in original Depeche Mode), review of a video [can
be accessed on-line, e.g.
http://raumfahrer.wordpress.com/rammstein/stripped/]

If you have difficulties obtaining any of the listed material or need further guidance please get in
touch as soon as possible.
As all chosen review pieces are of a very different nature your reviews will all have different
structures and focus; however, consider the following points as your guidance:
Explain the reasons for choosing this particular piece
Introduce the historical, political, cinematic etc. (as appropriate) background of the piece
Identify and discuss ideological, historical, political etc. implications of it
Highlight what larger political or social issues arise in thinking through the chosen piece.
Is your piece a response to any political or social situation? If so, what does it represent and
what does it aim to achieve?
If your piece is the embodiment of a particular policy or a reflection of it, explain what the
policy is and how is your review piece situated in relation to it (id it critical of it or does it
support its line of thinking)?

Be aware that you will need to read more widely about the piece in order to be able to write a
comprehensive review and thus complete this exercise successfully. If there are any problems or
something is unclear about the review you are very welcome to discuss it with either of us. It
remains necessary to reference your review in the way in which you would do in an essay.

Tutorials
15 per cent of your course mark is based on your contribution to the tutorials. Your tutorial
assessment mark will derive from two sources: a) your presentation and your role in leading one of
the tutorials in the module and b) your contribution to the discussions throughout the module. In
Week one you will be assigned to present on one of the topics listed below. Commonly there will be
two of you presenting on one topic. Please keep in mind that we mark presentations as a whole,
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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thus if two or more students are presenting, you will all be given the same mark. Collaboration and
communication between those presenting is necessary for a good mark.

Marks are awarded for the quality of the presentation, eloquent presentation style, appropriate
multi-media support, thoughtful participation in-group activities, evidence of preparation and
reading, insightful comments and collegial behavior. Considering that open discussion is critical to
learning, it matters that you learn to participate constructively in the early stages of your academic
career.

Please keep in mind that this is not a mark for attendance attendance is compulsory! Nor are high
marks only awarded to those who talk the most.

Tutorial participation will be assessed throughout the module.

Tutorial topics the topics listed below are vary in scope, some are very broad others more specific
and specialized. In your presentations you are invited to experiment with the topic and introduce
different angles, interpretations and understandings. There is no one right answer to the topic; they
are all invitations for a critical engagement, reflection and scholarly thought. Weekly readings should
guide your preparations for the presentation.

Tutorial topics:
Week 2: Taboo and Transgression
Week 3: Between Politics and Obscenity: Dawn of the Dead
Week 4: The Soldier Tim Hetherington
Week 5: Revolutionary Tourism in Tunisia
Week 6: Guantanamo: torture team v poetry
Week 7: Violence on display: Stanley Greene
Week 8: Yad Vashem and the Politics of Remembering
Week 9: Pornography enters High Street




Feedback
The School of Social Sciences is committed to providing timely and appropriate feedback to students
on their academic progress and achievement, thereby enabling students to reflect on their progress
and plan their academic and skills development effectively. Students are reminded that feedback is
necessarily responsive: only when a student has done a certain amount of work and approaches us
with it at the appropriate form is it possible for us to feed back on the students work. The main
forms of feedback on this course are in response to the portfolio and essay. We also draw your
attention to the variety of generic forms of feedback available to you on this as on all SOSS courses.
These include: meeting the lecturer/tutor during their office hours; emailing questions to the
lecturer/tutor; asking questions from the lecturer (before and after lecture); presenting a question
on the discussion board on Blackboard; and obtaining feedback from your peers during tutorials.

Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the theft or expropriation of someone elses work without proper acknowledgement,
presenting the material as if it were ones own. Plagiarism is a serious academic offence and the
consequences are severe. Students should read the Guidelines for Students reproduced in the Politics
Part 2 Guide and the Universitys policy on plagiarism
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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(http://www.studentnet.manchester.ac.uk/policies/display/?id=102536&off=RegSec-%3EAcaReg-
%3ETLSO )


ALL MARKS REMAIN PROVISIONAL UNTIL THE JANUARY 2014 EXAMINATION BOARDS.





POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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TIMETABLE



Week Lecture Seminar:week of Lecture topic Seminar Topic Lecturer
1 23 Sep 30 Sep Introduction: What is and what
is NOT politics of obscenity.
Introduction - rules of
the game
AZ and EPG
2 30 Sep 7 Oct Perverted curiosity -
transgression and taboo,
theoretical remarks
Taboo and
transgression
AZ
3 7 Oct 14 Oct Ghosts, zombies and the walking
dead impurity, modernity and
anxiety
Between politics and
obscenity: Dawn of
the Death
EPG
4 14 Oct 21 Oct Seductions of violence? The
murderer, the terrorist, and the
soldier
The soldier Tim
Hetherington
EPG
5 21 Oct 4 Nov Seductions of voyeurism? Spaces
of the abject

Revolutionary tourism
in Tunisia
AZ
28 Oct READING WEEK
6 4 Nov 11 Nov Law, exception and the excess Guantanamo: 'torture
team' v. poems
AZ
7 11 Nov 18 Nov The display of violence:
genocide, torture, rape
Violence on display
Stanley Greene
AZ
8 18 Nov 25 Nov The display of death and the
commemoration of horror
Yad Vashem and
politics of
remembering
EPG
9 25 Nov 2 Dec Conclusion: The seen, the unseen
and the off-scene
Pornography enters
High Street
AZ and EPG

POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Week One: Introduction: What is and what is NOT politics of obscenity

Readings

Michel Foucault, Ethics: subjectivity and truth (New York: The New Press, 1997).
Essays on On the government of the living and Preface to History of Sexuality, Volume II.
--- A Preface to Transgression in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and
Interviews, Donald F. Bouchard ed., 1977.

Can be found on-line or as part of other collections of Foucaults work.

Lynee Hunt, The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500-1800 (New
York: Zone Books, 1996).

Linda Williams, Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess, Film Quarterly, vol. 44 (4), 1991: 2 13.


Knowing some Ancient Greek mythology and Antigone (Sophocles play) will also be of general use
on this module.

POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Week Two: Perverted curiosity - transgression and taboo, theoretical remarks

Readings

Georges Bataille, Eroticism: Death and Sensuality (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986). Part one:
Taboo and Transgression.
Douglas, Mary Purity and Danger: an analysis of pollution and taboo (London: Routledge, 2002). [this
is one of the key books, relevant for a number of lectures and tutorials thus consider reading it
in full].

Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo and Other Works, The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume
XIII (London: Vintage, The Hogarth Press, 2001). Totem and Taboo; essay can be found in
many different collections.
---- Beyond Pleasure principle and Other Writings (London: Penguin Books, 2003). Essay
Beyond the Pleasure principle.
---- The Interpretation of Dreams (New York: Avon Books). See essay: 'Chapter V, The Material
and Sources of Dreams'.

Michel Foucault, Ethics: subjectivity and truth (New York: The New Press, 1997).
Essays on Sexual Choice, Sexual Act, The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will, Sex, Power
and the Politics of Identity and Sexuality of Solitude. Can be found on-line or as part of
other collections of Foucaults work.
---- The Will to Knowledge: the history of sexuality: 1 (London: Penguin, 1998).
Part Four: The Deployment of Sexuality with essays on Objective, Method, Domain, and
Periodization.

Pierre Legendre, The Masters of Law: A study of dogmatic function, in A Legendre Reader, Peter
Goodrich, ed (Basingstoke, London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1997): 98133.

Claude Levi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning (London: Routledge, 2001).

Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex and Regression in Savage Society (1927). Look at Part 2: 'The mirror of
tradition' and Part 4: 'Instinct and culture'.
Available: http://archive.org/details/sexrepressionins00mali

David Wall, 'Transgression, Excess and the Violence of Looking in the Art of Kara Walker', Oxford Art
Journal, vol 33 (2), (2010): 279 - 299.

For further sociology/anthropology focused readings see also:

Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Martino Fine Books, 2012). There are
many different editions and publications of the same work.

Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and Its Discontent (London: Penguin, 2004). There are many different
editions and publications of the same work.

POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Week Three: Ghosts, zombies and the walking dead Impurity, Modernity and Anxiety

Readings

Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992).
Philip Brophy, Horrality, The textuality of Contemporary Horror Films, Screen, vol. 27(1), 1986: 2-13
Noel Carroll, Nightmare and the Horror Film: The Symbolic Biology of Fantastic Beings, Film
Quarterly, vol. 34(3), 1981:16-25
Richard, Devetak, The Gothic Scene of International Relations: Ghosts, Monsters, Terror and the
Sublime after September 11, Review of International Studies, vol. 31, 2005: 621-643
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger. An analysis of concept of pollution and taboo (London: Routledge,
2002).
Daniel W. Drezner, Theories of International Politics and Zombies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2011).
Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Oxford: Polity Press, 1990).
---- Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Oxford: Polity Press, 1994).
Julia Kristeva, The Power of Horror: An Essay in Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press,
1982).
Ruth Mayer, Virus Discourse: The Rhetoric of Threat and Terrorism in the Biothriller, Cultural
Critique, vol. 66 (2007): 1-20.
Corey Robin, Fear The History of a Political Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
John Allen Stevenson, A Vampire in the Mirror: the sexuality of Dracula, PMLA, vol. 103 (2), 1988:
139 149.


Also see the photography of Tim Hetherington.
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Week Four: Seductions of violence? The murderer, the terrorist and the soldier

Readings

Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering ( Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press, 2001).
Christopher Coker, Warrior Ethos: Military Culture and the War on Terror (London: Routledge, 2007).
Allan Feldman, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern
Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
Jeff Ferrell, Culture, Crime and Cultural Criminology, Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture,
3 (1995): 2542
Dave Grossman, On Killing. The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Back Bay
Books, 1995).
Mark S. Hamm, Apocalyptic violence. The Seduction of Terrorist Subcultures, Theoretical
Criminology, 8(3), 2004: 323-339
Rune Henriksen, Warriors in combat what makes people actively fight in combat?, Journal of
Strategic Studies, 30(2), 2007: 187-223.
Jack Katz, Seductions of Crime - A chilling exploration of the criminal mindfrom juvenile delinquency
to cold-blooded murder (New York: Basic Books, 1988).
Charlotte Linde, Life Stories: Creation of Coherence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Stephen Lyng, Edgework: A Social Psychological Analysis of Voluntary Risk Taking, American Journal
of Sociology, 95(4), 1990: 85186
Carol Mason, Killing For Life: The Apocalyptic Narrative of Pro-Life Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2002).
Theodore Nadelson, Trained to Kill: Soldiers at War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2005).
Carolyn Nordstrom, Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-
First Century, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004).
Mike Presdee, Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime (London: Routledge, 2000).
Eviatar Zerubavel, Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1997).


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Week Five: Seductions of voyeurism? Spaces of the abject
Readings

Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: the witness and the archive (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 2008).

Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art (New York: Semiotext(e), (2005): 25 35; 43 87; 181 211.
----- Simulacra and Simulation. Accessible:
https://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/baudrillard-
simulacra_and_simulation.pdf
This contribution has a number of essay relevant to different topics, thus consult the reading
for topic you see appropriate.

Dorina Maria Buda and Alison Jane McIntosh, Dark tourism and voyeurism: tourist arrest for
spying in Iran, International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research vol 7 (3)
2013: 214 226.

Erik H. Cohen. Educational dark tourism at an in populo site: the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem,
Annals of Tourism Research Vol 38 (1): 193 209.

Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Womens Lives in (London:
University of California Press, 2000). Essay on: The Prostitute, the Colonel and the
Nationalist.

Wu Hung, Tiananmen Square: A Political History of Monuments, Representations 35 (2001): 84117.

J. John Lennon and Malcolm Foley, Interpretation of the Unimaginable: the US Holocaust Memorial
Museum, Washington D.C. and Dark Tourism, Journal of Travel Research, vol. 38 (1), 1999:
46 50.

Joane Nagel, Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003). Essay on: Sex and War: Fighting Men, Comfort Women and
the Military-Sexual Complex.

Tom Phillips, Weary of war but ready for action: American soldiers set their sight on delights if Rio,
The Guardian, January 18 2007.
Accessible: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/18/usa.brazil

Jacques Rancire, The Emancipated Spectator (New York: Verso, 2009). Essays on: The intolerable
Image and The Pensive Image.

Michael J. Shapiro, Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997).
----Cinematic Geopolitics (New York: Routledge, 2009).

Philip Stone and Richard Sharpley, Consuming dark tourism: a thanatological perspective, vol. 35 (2),
2008: 574 595.

Carolyn Strange and Michael Kempa, Shades of dark tourism: Alcatraz and Robben Island, Annals of
Tourism Research, vol 30 (2), 2003: 386 405.

POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Elspeth Van Veeren, Captured by the camera's eye: Guantnamo and the shifting frame of the
Global War on Terror, Review of International Studies, vol 37 (4), 2011: 1721 1749.

Tony Walter, Dark Tourism: mediating between the dead and the living. In: R. Sharpley and P. Stone,
eds. The Darker Side of Travel: the theory and practice of dark tourism, (Bristol: Channel
View Publications, 2009).
Available: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/18504/1/Walter_2009_Dark_Tourism.pdf

Paul Williams, Memorial museums: the global rush to commemorate atrocities (London: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2008).

Nicholas A. Wise, Post-war tourism and the imaginative geographies of Bosnia and Herzegovina and
Croatia, European Journal of Tourism Research Vol. 4 (1), 2011: 5 24.


Some of the readings on issues of dark tourism can also be useful for discussions in weeks 7 and 8.
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Week Six: Law, exception and the excess

Readings

Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

Claudia Aradau, Law Transformed: Guantnamo and the other exception, Third World
Quarterly, 28 no. 3 (2007): 489501.

Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism. Le Monde, September 2001, Accessible:
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/the-spirit-of-terrorism/

Anthony Burke, Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason, Theory and Event, Vol 10 (2),
2007. Available: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/toc/tae10.2.html

Mark Falkoff, Poems from Guantnamo: A Detainee Speak (Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 2007).

Michel Foucault, I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister and my brother A case
of parricide in the 19
th
Century (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1982).
Especially The Dossier, The Animal, the Madman, and Death and Tales of Murder.
--- Ethics: subjectivity and truth (New York: The New Press, 1997). Essays on Psychiatric
Power and The Abnormal. They can be accessed on line pr find as part of other collections
of Foucaults work.

Major David J.R. Frakt, Closing Argument at Guantnamo: The Torture of Mohammed
Jawad, Harvard Human Rights Journal, 21, no.1 : 123.

Derek Gregory, The Black Flag: Guantnamo Bay and the Space of Exception, Geografiska Annaler B
88, no.4 (2006): 40527.

Claudio Minca, The Return of the Camp, Progress in Human Geography 29, no.4 (2005):
40512.

Stewart Motha, Guantnamo Bay, Abandoned Being and the Constitution of Jurisdiction, in
Jurisprudence of Jurisdiction, Shaun McVeigh ed. (London: UCL Press, 2006): 6383.

Jason Ralph, The laws of war and the state of American exception, Review of International
Studies 35 no. 3 (2009): 63149.

Philippe Sands, Torture Team: Rumsfelds Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: the making and unmaking of the world (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1985). Chapter 1: The Structure of Torture and Chapter 2: The Structure of War.

For further theoretical and historical studies in the concepts of psychiatric power and the abnormal
see:

Michel Foucault, Abnormal - Lecture at the Collge de France, 1974 1975 (New York: Picador,
1999).
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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----- Psychiatric Power - Lecture at the Collge de France, 1973 1974 (New York: Picador,
2003).

This material can also be useful for discussions in week 7.
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Week Seven: The display of violence: genocide, torture, rape

Readings

Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art (New York: Semiotext(e), 2005): 133 177.

Kevin Blackburn, Reminiscence and war trauma: recalling the Japanese occupation of Singapore,
1942 1945, Oral History, Vol 33 (2), 2005: 91 98.

Simone M. Caron, Birth Control and the Black Communities in the 190s: genocide or power
politics?, Journal of Social History, Vol 31 3), 1998: 545 569.
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: an analysis of pollution and taboo (London: Routledge, 2002).

Jonathan Gottschall, Exploring Wartime Rape, The Journal of Sex Research, Vol 41(2), 2004:129-36.

Stefano Harney and Randy Martin, Mode of excess: Bataille, Criminality and the War on Terror,
Theory and Event, Vol 10 (2), 2007.
Available: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.2harney.html

Alexander Laban Hinton, Why do you kill: The Cambodian genocide and the dark side of face and
honor, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol 57 (1), 1998: 93 122.

Alison Howell, Victims or Madmen? The Diagnostic Competition over Terrorist
Detainees in Guantnamo Bay, International Political Sociology 1, no.1 (2007): 2947.

Mark A. Largent, The Greatest Curse of the Race: eugenic sterilization in Oregon, 1909 1983,
Oregin History Quarterly, vol 103 (2), 2002: 188 209.

Joane Nagel, Ethnicity and Sexuality, Annual Review of Sociology, vol 26, 2000: 107 133.

Jacques Rancire, The Emancipated Spectator (New York: Verso, 2009). Essays on: The intolerable
Image and The Pensive Image.

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin, 2003).

Suzanne Tessler, Compulsory Sterilization Practices, Frontiers: a journal of women studies, vol 1 (2),
1976: 52 66.

Mary Ann Ttreault, The Sexual Politics of Abu Ghraib: Hegemony, spectacle and the global war on
terror, NWSA Journal, Vol 18(3), 2006: 33 50.

Bonnie Thomas, Identity at the crossroads: an exploration of French Caribbean gender identity, in
Carribean Studies, Vol 32 (2): 45 62.

Cornelie Usborne, Social body, Racial Body, Womens Body. Discourses, Policies, Practices from
Wilhelmine to Nazi Germany 1912 1945, Historical Research, vol 36 (2) 2011: 140 161.

Elisabeth Weber, Literary Justice? Poems from Guantanamo Bay Prison Camp, Comparative
Literature Studies, vol 48 (3) 2011: 417 434.

Also see the work of Stanley Greene and consider literature listed under week 6.
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Week Eight: The display of death and the commemoration of horror

Readings

T.G Ashplant, Graham Dawson & Michael Roper, eds. The Politics of war memory and
commemoration (London: Routledge, 2000).
Marie Breen-Smyth, Hierarchies of Pain and Responsibility: Victims and War by Other Means in
Northern Ireland, Tripodos, vol. 25, 2009: 27-40
Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
John R. Gillis, ed. Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1994).
Brian Graham, & Yvonne Whelan, The legacies of the dead: commemorating the Troubles in
Northern Ireland, Environment and Planning D, vol. 25(3), 2005: 476495.
Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1997).
Herwig, Holger & Michael Keren, eds. War memory and popular culture: essays on modes of
remembrance and commemoration (London: McFarland & Co Inc, 2009).
Laleh Khalili, Heroes and martyrs of Palestine: The politics of national commemoration, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Anatoly M. Khazanov, Whom to Mourn and Whom to Forget? (Re)constructing Collective Memory
in Contemporary Russia, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, vol. 9(2-3, 2008):
293-310.
Mara Kozelsky, Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Philip Kohl Philip, eds. Selective remembrances; archaeology
in the construction, commemoration and consecration of national pasts (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2008).
Shaul Krakover, The Holocaust Remembrance Site of Yad Vashem Welcomes Visitors,
International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, vol. 11(4), 2002: 359-
362.

Also consider readings listed for weeks 5 and 6.
POLI32501 Politics of Obscenity School of Social Sciences
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Week Nine: Conclusion: The seen, the unseen and the off-scene

Readings for further study and help in essay writings

Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927 1939 (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1985). See the following essays: Sacrifices and The Sorcerers
Apprentice. *also accessible on line in different collections+

Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art (New York: Semiotext(e),( 2005): 89 129.

Pierre Legendre, Introduction to the Theory of the Image: Narcissus and the Other in the Mirror,
Law and Critique, Vol, VIII, no. 1 (1997): 3 35.

Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality I, II and III (London: Penguin, 1998). [this is one of the key
studies in the history of sexuality, consisting of three volumes: Vol I: The Will to Knowledge;
Vol II: The Use of Pleasure; Vol III: The Care of the Self].

Elisabeth Ladenson, Dirt for Art's Sake: books on trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2007).

Jacques Rancire, The Emancipated Spectator (New York: Verso, 2009).

Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays (Penguin Classics, 2009).

Mathieu Trachman, Le travail pornographique: Enqute sur la production de fantasmes (Paris : Le
Dcouverte, 2013).

Slavoj Zizek, Violence: six sideways reflections (London: Profile Books, 2009).



For political significance of Marquis de Sades work see for example:

Maurice Blanchot, Sade. This essay can be found in a number of different collections and on-line

Pierre Klossowski, Sade My Neighbour (Quartet Books, 1992).