The Arts of not Being Governed

Master 2024/2025

Type: Elective course (Global and Regional History)

Area of studies: History

Delivered by: Department of History

Where: School of Arts and Humanities

When: 2 year, 1 module

Mode of studies: offline

Open to: students of all HSE University campuses

Instructors: Igor Kuziner

Master’s programme: Global and Regional History

Language: English

ECTS credits: 3

Full Syllabus Ask Question

Abstract

This MA course explores the underground and hybrid social practices that exist outside of mainstream society. It focuses on the technologies and strategies that individuals and groups use to resist governance or to create alternative forms of living. Not concentrating solely on Russia, the course will focus on a wide repertoire of such examples from the past and present - radical religious escapists, criminals, queers, refugees, cultural and political non-conformists - and others whose activities challenge hegemonic political regimes and authoritarian social taxonomies and hierarchies. At the same time, the course will not focus on binary dichotomies of "state versus underground," but rather on those hybrid social spaces that emerge at the boundaries of the conventional underground and the norm. By studying these non-governed practices, students will gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of a grassroot social reality now and then and of the methodological language the scholars apply to describe it.

Learning Objectives

The aim of the course is to provide students with information about modern academic theories in the field of interaction between society and power in its various forms

Expected Learning Outcomes

Students will gain knowledge of current theoretical developments on the concept of resistance
Students will gain knowledge of contemporary political and social ideas of bodily resistance
The students gain knowledge of contemporary political theories of warfare
The students gain an ability to employ the contemporary theories of articulated and unarticulated resistance of oppressed groups in their researches
The students gain an ability to employ theories of the politicization of death in their researches
The students will gain an ability to employ different approaches to theorizing religious ideologies and practices as factors of resistance and adaptation in their researches
The students will gain an ability to use current approaches to the theorization of the prison experience in researches
The students will gain an ability to use current approaches to theorizing biopolitics in the field of substance use in their research
The students gain an ability to use current approaches to theorizing individual agency of possession in their studies
The students gain an ability to use current approaches to textual resistance in their studies
The students gain an ability to use current approaches to theorizing appropriation and counter-hegemonic reclaiming of geographical spaces in their studies
The students gain an ability to use current approaches to theorizing the experience of displaced persons in their studies

Course Contents

Arts of being non-governed, rhizomatic landscapes of counter-hegemonic action
Carnal utopias and social practices
Post-modern warfare, hybrid combatants, precarious battlefields
Subalternity, voiced and silent performativity
Subversive necropolitics in art and beyond
Messianic utopias, spiritual partisans
Extra-legal social architecture, non-Foucauldian perspectives on the penitentiary experience
Biopolitics of addiction
Possessions, bodily autonomy and subversive otherworldly agencies
Transparent textuality, subversive textual practices
Alternative sovereignties, geographical autonomy and spatial anarchism
Fugitives, refugees, and other narrators of the Utopian margins

Assessment Elements

In-class discussions
Seminars are planned as weekly online/offline discussions of assigned readings, which will complement the lectures and explore a given topic in in a more comprehensive way. The discussions will be based around the focus questions, provided to students to reflect upon in advance.
In-class presentation
Students’ in-class presentations should be based on one of the books/ articles from the syllabus. Presentation itself should be devoted to the author’s biography, career highlights, and her/his standing in the field. Main part of the presentations consists of 4-5 questions that student have prepared for the general discussion with the group that relate to the main arguments of the book/article. Student have to mediate the discussion. Power Point or .pdf presentations are recommended to be used to make it easier for the audience to stay engaged and involved during the talk. Time limit for the presentation and discussion is 30-40 minutes.
Written Assignments
The final assignment is a seminar plan on a topic of the student's choice. The seminar plan should include a brief abstract of the topic, a list of required (2-3) and optional (2-3) readings, primary sources and/or media materials, as well as a brief synopsis of each text or document. In addition, for each text, the student must generate a minimum of 5 questions for class discussion. The written assignment should be 5-7 pages long (line spacing -2, margins - 1 inch). Reference format is APA. For every day the assignment is late one point is taken from the grade.

Interim Assessment

2024/2025 1st module
0.4 * In-class discussions + 0.2 * In-class presentation + 0.4 * Written Assignments

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

A companion to gender studies, , 2009
A history of drugs : drugs and freedom in the liberal age, Seddon, T., 2010
A world survey of religion and the state, Fox, J., 2008
America's death penalty : between past and present, , 2011
Analyzing digital fiction, , 2014
Armed conflict and displacement : the protection of refugees and displaced persons under international humanitarian law, Jacques, M., 2012
Boundas, C. V. (2006). Deleuze and Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=165167
Carl Schmitt and the politics of hostility, violence and terror, Slomp, G., 2009
Charity Butcher, & Maia Carter Hallward. (2021). NGOs and Human Rights : Comparing Faith-Based and Secular Approaches. University of Georgia Press.
Death and dying : a sociological introduction, Howarth, G., 2007
Discipline and punish : the birth of the prison, Foucault, M., 1991
Gibney, M. J. (2004). The Ethics and Politics of Asylum : Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees. Cambridge University Press.
Gilberto Peters. (2019). The Middle East: Arm Sales, Refugees and the Islamic State. New York: SNOVA. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=2247361
Glen R. Hanson, Peter J. Venturelli, & Annette E. Fleckenstein. (2022). Drugs & Society: Vol. Fourteenth edition. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Immigration and politics in the new Europe : reinventing borders, Lahav, G., 2004
Irina Tcherneva. (2019). For an Exploration of Visual Resources of the History of Imprisonment. https://doi.org/10.4000/pipss.5003
Kendall, L. (1985). Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits : Women in Korean Ritual Life. University of Hawaii Press.
Kerton, S. (2012). Tahrir, Here? The Influence of the Arab Uprisings on the Emergence of Occupy. Social Movement Studies, 11(3/4), 302–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2012.704183
Knowing demons, knowing spirits in the early modern period, , 2018
LaGarde, Jennifer, and Darren Hudgins. Fact Vs. Fiction : Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News, International Society for Technology in Education, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hselibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5880820.
Local histories/global designs : coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking, Mignolo, W. D., 2012
Mbembe, A., & Corcoran, S. (2019). Necropolitics. Durham: Duke University Press Books. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=2285026
Meade, T. A., & Wiesner, M. E. (2004). A Companion to Gender History. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=108703
Mumford, A. (DE-588)1015966020, (DE-576)351343180. (2013). Proxy warfare : [war and conflict in the modern world] / Andrew Mumford. Cambridge[u.a.]: Polity Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edswao&AN=edswao.399020624
The Oxford handbook of refugee and forced migration studies / edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Katy Long, Nando Sigona. (2016). Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edswao&AN=edswao.462875288
The political philosophy of Michel Foucault, Kelly, M. G. E., 2009

Recommended Additional Bibliography

An anthology of graphic fiction, cartoons and true stories. [Vol.1]: ., , 2006
Aspects of religion in the Soviet Union, 1917-1967, , 1971
Choosing life, choosing death : the tyranny of autonomy in medical ethics and law, Foster, C., 2009
Climate change and migration : security and borders in a warming world, White, G., 2011
Consuming habits : global and historical perspectives on how cultures define drugs, , 2007
Deleuze: a philosophy of the event : together with the vocabulary of Deleuze, Zourabichvili, F., 2012
Democracy and the politics of the extraordinary : Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt, Kalyvas, A., 2009
International law and the rescue of refugees at sea, Ratcovich, M., 2019
Morris, R. C., & Spivak, G. C. (2010). Can the Subaltern Speak? : Reflections on the History of an Idea. New York: Columbia University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=584675
Prison Readings, A critical introduction to prisons and imprisonment, edited by Yvonne Jewkes and Helen Johnston, XII, 305 p., , 2006
The demonic : literature and experience, Fernie, E., 2013
The image of man : the creation of modern masculinity, Mosse, G. L., 1998

Authors

LYUBAVINA SVETLANA VYACHESLAVOVNA
KUZINER IGOR EDUARDOVICH

Course Syllabus