POST-4331H: Power and Resistance

Instructor: Paul Mazzocchi (paulmazzocchi@trentu.ca)

Course Code: POST 4331

When Taken: Fall 2022

Major Presentation: Culture, Resistance and Struggle Stuart Hall

Major Essay: Power and Acts of Resistance_ America in a Post-Dobbs World

This was a fourth-year politics seminar class that discussed power, resistance, and the possibility for hope. As such, many of our discussions surrounded issues within society, and potential ways to resist structures of power that perpetuate these issues. For my major essay, I examined Dobbs’s decision within the context of bio-politics. This is an American Supreme Court judgment that reversed abortion protections provided by Roe v. Wade. I examined the Dobbs decision through the lens of the American government attempting to control the health, particularly the reproductive health, of American residents. I argued that while the Dobbs decision changed the lived reality for pregnant people, this change was a continuation of pre-existing biopolitical control over the bodies of Americans. This control, however, is a point around which people could mobilize for resistance.

This class focused mainly on theoretical aspects of power, resistance, and hope, through examining the perspectives of various political theorists on these subjects. Our class then discussed how these could be applied to the present political context, and how the beliefs of the theorists aligned with our own views of the world.