The TV show is a central focus of American life, one that not only reflects but also produces social imaginaries for the American audience that support the way people interact and engage with reality. It is the nation’s most influential storyteller, which dominates the nation’s imagination and understanding of reality. This dissertation explores the political and cultural meanings of four TV shows from the George W. Bush era: The West Wing (1999-2007), Deadwood (2004-06), The Wire (2002-08) and Heroes (2006-10). In examining these TV shows, this dissertation aims to shed light on both the origins of the state of exception, its conduct, its purpose, and the possibility of meaningful critique of or resistance to the state of exception. Chapter I discusses The West Wing, focusing on President Bartlet’s decision-making process regarding the assassination of Abdul Shareef, so as to elucidate the decisive actions of a sovereign figure in a state of exception. Chapter II explores Deadwood’s resurrection of the nineteenth-century mining camp in our twenty-first century, in terms of the capitalist state of exception. In discussing the show’s portrayal of the conflicts among the main characters, this chapter reveals that the same sovereign logic of exception is innate in the expansion of capitalism. Chapter III examines The Wire’s depiction of rebellious petty-sovereigns such as Major Colvin, Detectives McNulty and Freamon. According to The Wire, the claims of equality are deeply urgent in the bleak reality of contemporary America. With their commitment to equality and justice, the petty-sovereigns intervene in the bleak reality in their subversive ways. Chapter IV explores Heroes’s rendering of the main characters’ struggles against a fictional national emergency, the Company’s conspiracy to blow up half of New York City. In this chapter, I argue that Heroes portrays a political subject that attempts to constitute itself outside biopolitical sovereign power—what Hardt and Negri would call the advent of the multitude. While explicating the struggles of the main characters, I argue that its limitation in envisioning a new world underscores how contemporary critics fail to see past sovereign politics when they imagine another world. / English

A multidisciplinary approach is needed to critique the frequently invoked but seldom questioned notion of "human dignity," a discursive tool that is subtly serving abusive power structures while seemingly promoting human rights. The discourse of human dignity misrepresents the meaning of empowerment for modern citizens, making them interested more in political gestures and less in profit, comfort and protection from abuse. Dignity‘s epistemes—self-assertion, recognition, political action, public-spiritedness, responsibility, resistance, the denial of animal instinct, sacrifice—should not be human ideals, for they are exactly the opposite of the sovereign‘s characteristics and because they are responsible for recursive violence that preserves the status quo. They should be replaced with ethics based on sensuous interest, instinct, and natural-spiritedness (a sense of mystical oneness with other living beings). This dissertation answers Foucault‘s question about how the modern state endows citizens with a political subjectivity while simultaneously subjecting them to a totalized system, exposing human dignity as just the link between individuation and totalization. It questions Agamben‘s notion of the indistinction between political life and natural life, arguing that sovereign power, using the discourse of human dignity, creates a clear distinction. The human dignity discourse keeps the human within political life, representing such life as the middle point between the instinctive life of the animal and the mechanical life of the laborer. In reality, the dissertation shows, these two demonized modes of life are the same mode, which should be championed as a valuable and empowered state of being. In the literary field, a close examination reveals that J. M. Coetzee‘s fiction subverts the human dignity discourse while Kazuo Ishiguro‘s work is enmeshed in it. Coetzee generates sympathy for humans who lack the sense of human dignity and act on mere instinct. He offers ―disgrace‖ as a spiritual-ethical state of sensuality, acceptance and humility and promotes an agenda of desire-based rights in lieu of dignity-based ones. His writings also eschew authorial dignity as they discount the values of newness and originality in favor of expression attuned to desire, even when such moves appear selfish and politically irresponsible.

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Submitted by Marcelo Andrade Silva (marcelo.andradesilva@ufpe.br) on 2015-03-05T13:40:59Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Germana_dissert.pdf: 585562 bytes, checksum: fb3157d0aac7b86bb1b372efba11f732 (MD5) license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T13:40:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Germana_dissert.pdf: 585562 bytes, checksum: fb3157d0aac7b86bb1b372efba11f732 (MD5) license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / A ultrapassagem do conceito de biopolítica para o de tanatopolítica acompanha o desconcerto da nossa atualidade política. A biopolítica entendida por Michel Foucault é uma tecnologia de poder cuja ação estende-se tanto aos indivíduos isoladamente quanto à população como um todo. A partir das investigações promovidas por Foucault acerca da biopolítica trouxemos ao debate a tematização de Hannah Arendt sobre a banalidade do mal, posto que encontramos simetria entre o modo de gerência característico da biopolítica e a consequente formação de subjetividades tendenciosas à obediência irrestrita e, como consequência, descomprometidas com a atividade de pensar. Junto a estas análises acrescentamos às reflexões o panorama teórico de Giorgio Agamben quando trata da nossa contemporaneidade ao inaugurar uma nova representação ao trazer à luz a exceção característica do nosso fazer político e sua produção de hominissacri e vidas nuas.

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This dissertation is based on the observation that Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" has become a popular reference in contemporary culture. Not only in the field of literary scholarship but also in the realm of art, political theory and philosophy, it is employed as an example of authentic resistance to power, a counter-intuitive politics that finds its strength in withdrawal, inaction, and inscrutability. The thesis examines the reasons and motives that drive literary scholars, artists and philosophers to read, interpret and use the story in such a way. It does so by analyzing the nature of and reoccurring patterns in Bartleby Industry, the enormous bulk of academic scholarship devoted to the story. It observes how the story is made use of outside of literary scholarship by disciplines, such as art and philosophy, that are not primarily concerned with the literary complexity of the story but use it to work on their own problems of politics and ethics. It pays special attention to its popularity among influential Postmarxist philosophers, namely Slavoj Žižek, Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze. As the presence of "Bartleby" in the realm of philosophy has to do with a particular function literature performs in that field, in these chapters "Bartleby" becomes more of a guiding thread in order to...

La question du règne des philosophes ne se comprend qu’au prix d’un détour par les marges de la politique classique. D’abord nous avons montré que ces marges sont définies historiquement par un discours qui articule le règne, le savoir et le salut (chapitre I). Puis nous avons montré que la notion de règne, dès lors qu’elle est attribuée à des philosophes, s’établit dans les marges de la notion classique de basilein, en en subvertissant le sens classique (chapitre II). Ensuite nous avons montré que le discours sur le règne des philosophes est une tentative venant des marges de la politique pour subvertir en en faisant usage, c’est-à-dire pour destituer, la liaison classique entre le muthos et l’unification politique (chapitre III), ce qui a impliqué de comprendre comment le philosophe peut être aux marges de la politique tout en en étant le fondement (chapitre IV). Cela nous a conduit à voir que le philosophe est en marge par rapport à l’exigence d’être utile à la cité (chapitre V) et par rapport à l’exigence d’un savoir fondé sur l’expérience (chapitre VI). Enfin, nous avons essayé de montrer que le règne des philosophes s’inscrit dans la recherche du salut de la cité, thème marginal dans les études sur Platon (chapitre VII). / The question of the philosophers’ reign can only be understood at the cost of a detour through the margins of classical politics. First of all, I have shown that these margins have historically been defined by a discourse focusing on the relationship between kingdom, knowledge and salvation (chapter 1). I have then shown that the notion of kingdom itself, when it is attributed to philosophers, positions itself in the margins of the notion of basilein, while actively subverting its classical meaning (chapter 2). The discourse about the philosophers’ reign must therefore be understood as an attempt coming from the margins of politics to use the traditional relation between the muthos and political unification, in order to subvert it, namely, to depose it. This required me to explore the way in which the philosopher can simultaneously be in the margins of politics and at the very foundation of politics (chapter 4). The philosopher’s position in the city is doubly marginal: first, he is not subject to the imperative to be useful to the city (chapter 5), and secondly, he is not subject to the imperative to ground knowledge in experience (chapter 6). Finally, I have set out to show that the philosophers’ reign inscribes itself within a quest for the city’s salvation, a theme that is itself marginal in Plato studies, and deserves more attention than it has hitherto received (chapter 7).

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La philosophie politique contemporaine est chargée d’une histoire qu’il reste encore à déblayer, tant la « guerre civile européenne » du siècle dernier a forcé son autodafé. Dans ce mémoire, nous prenons Georges Sorel, figure de proue du syndicalisme révolutionnaire des années 1900, comme figure archétypique de ce qui demeure en reste de cette histoire. Archétype non seulement de la manière dont des théoriciens de premier plan peuvent tomber, par la force de l’histoire, dans l’oubli le plus absolu, mais aussi archétype de ces forces mêmes, alors que Sorel est considéré par l’histoire intellectuelle comme le penseur ayant dressé le pont entre l’extrême-gauche et l’extrême-droite. Ce mémoire ne s’affaire pas directement à lui attribuer la « paternité du fascisme » ni à l’en disculper. Il s’agit bien plutôt de procéder à une déconstruction de ses principales idées à partir d’un angle essentiellement philosophique, procédé connaissant peu d’antécédents. Plus précisément, notre travail consiste à en dégager une définition de l’éthique, alors que le geste théorique principal de Sorel apparaît bien être une réduction du politique à l’éthique. Pour ce faire, nous mobilisons la philosophie contemporaine, notamment Gilles Deleuze et Giorgio Agamben, en raison de la forte affinité théorique qu’ils ont avec Sorel, particulièrement dans la définition de l’éthique. / Contemporary political philosophy is fraught with a history still to be discharged, as much as last century’s “European civil war” forced its concealing. In this masters thesis, we seize Georges Sorel, figurehead of the 1900s revolutionary syndicalism, as an archetypical figure of what is “in remaining” of this history. Archetype not only of the way in which popular theorists can be easily forgotten by the force of history, but also archetype of these forces themselves, as Sorel is considered by intellectual history as the thinker having set up the bridge between extreme left and extreme right. This master does not directly intend to attribute to Sorel the “paternity of fascism”, or to exonerate him. It rather develops a deconstruction of its principal ideas from an essentially philosophical standpoint, method virtually unprecedented. More precisely, our work consists to extricate Sorel’s definition of ethics, whereas his major theoretical gesture appears like a reduction of politics to ethics. To do so, we mobilize contemporary philosophy, especially Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben, because of their strong theoretical affinities with Sorel, particularly in their definition of ethics.