Biopolitics East Asian History

AY2019/2020 Semester 1

This course offers a comparative study of issues related to the history of biology and the uses of biological knowledge in East Asia. Biomedical technologies, biosecurity, biodiversity, and biobanking number among various issues that increasingly pertain to biopolitics. Used to describe 17th century shifts in sovereign power, Foucault raised the term biopolitics, along with anatomo-politics, to describe how different levels of life became increasingly regulated, from species-centric populations to individual bodies, respectively. Issues that involve the biological occur in many different locations with different styles of governance, but analyses of biopolitics have tended to relate more to European history. Within the grain of Asian history, the study of issues that involve the biological requires a questioning of existing theoretical frameworks used to examine the politicization of life. This class explores imperial, colonial, and national experiences in East Asia in order to examine how various societies, polities, and people have authored, approached, and interpreted knowledge about different levels of regenerative life. HH1001 highly recommended in preparation of this course.