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Category Archives: Research Notes

More Biopolitics and Bioethics

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Foucauldians–or anyone studying biopolitics or biopower in general–likely don’t spend enough time talking about bioethics. I’m not sure why this is the case. There are, of course, a few notable exceptions to this. For instance, Lorna Weir’s excellent Pregnancy, Risk and Biopolitics: On the Threshold of the Living Subject (Routledge, 2006). When Foucauldians take up ethics, [...]

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Abstracts for “Thinking With Animals” Conference

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Some abstracts for the “Thinking With Animals” conference at Brock University on March 31 and April 1. The first abstract is for a pre-constituted panel with Eric and James. The second is from a project I’ve been passively working on regarding the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals investigation/raid/take-over of the Toronto [...]

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Influential Texts

Friday, January 22, 2010

There have a been a few posts recently on “intellectual biography” and “influential books” (here and here), as well as expressions that this trend continue. I don’t see why I shouldn’t jump on the bandwagon as well. For myself, unlike some of the others pursuing these sorts of posts, I wouldn’t say that there have [...]

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Summer Projects

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Because everyone else is doing it! What I’d like to accomplish this summer. I. Writing (1) Finish the damn dissertation. DissertationMaster.mellel is at 187 completed, formatted and mostly copy-edited pages. Two substantive chapters left (on Mandeville and Ferguson, roughly thirty pages formatted each), polish the introduction (mostly done except for the chapter summaries), and the [...]

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Excessively ambitious to-do list

Monday, April 20, 2009

Write overview for first year seminar on “Animals, Environment and the Law” Finish planning the course on animals for the Enriched Mini-Course Program: guest speakers, teaching notes, videos Finish chapter on Locke Convert finished chapter on Locke into conference paper Finish chapter on anthropomorphism Convert finished chapter on anthropomorphism into conference paper Finish paper on [...]

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Appropriation; Private; Property

Monday, January 12, 2009

Recently written as an aside in my chapter on Locke (also unedited): Note: Appropriate, Private Property The “means to appropriate” the common and thus transform it into private property is absolutely essential to Locke’s political theory and has significant consequences for the theory of political or civil society including the right of resistance to tyranny [...]

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Begging for more help!

Sunday, November 2, 2008

I have the following two references from a text written in 1609 – Fern. Meth. “Id malva peculiare est, ut imposita istibusvesparum & apum dolores levet. Fern. Meth. 1.6.cap.4. Stercus vaccinum vesparum itus sanat, & indite aceto tumores digerit. Fern. Meth. 1.5.cap.27.” The next line cites Dodoens’s Stirpum historae pemptabes sex (1587), so, presumably, Fern. [...]

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Publication Advice

Saturday, November 1, 2008

If you had edited a text – roughly of political theory – that has not been in print since the early eighteenth century and this editing involved the usual things: cross-referencing across a number of editions, tracking down the sources, finding translations, correcting errors, explaining obsolete or obscure terms, etc. Where would you seek to [...]

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Aristotle

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Nearly ten years after I read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a first year undergrad – and nine years after I first read his Politics as a second year – I think I am starting to appreciate his work. Perhaps this is confirmation of Heidegger’s proposition that one should study Aristotle for ten to fifteen years [...]

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Worth Reading

Friday, July 25, 2008

I’d like to draw the readership’s attention to two recent and excellent articles (note: all three authors are on my supervisory committee): Brian Singer and Lorna Weir “Sovereignty, Governance and the Political: The Problematic of Foucault” Thesis Eleven 94: 49-71. This is a companion article to their “Politics and Sovereign Power: Considerations on Foucault” European [...]

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