LISO: 10/21/2016 Policing the self: A political and moral ethnography of American police power, Brandon Mells UCLA
Policing the self: A political and moral ethnography of American police power Brandon Mells, UCLA * Friday, October 21 * Education 1205 * 1:30-3:30 pm During the last several years, a remarkable shift has taken place in the public discourses surrounding American law enforcement and contemporary police practice. Law enforcement has come under intense scrutiny by the American public in general, and social movements like Black Lives Matter have drawn increasing attention to the state sanctioned violence committed against black bodies in the US. One of the main questions the American public faces in this discursive shift though is not simply why there is an uneven distribution of violence towards black people in the US; rather, I argue that the question the American public faces regarding contemporary police practice concerns the bio-political struggle over life itself which is being waged on American streets and is at the heart of the organization of contemporary police practice. Taking off from the important insights of Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman on the political and moral constitution of the individual in society, in this presentation I hope to examine how contemporary American police practice is implicated in the politics and morality of the self. Indeed, I will argue that the question of the self, i.e., who someone in fact is, is crucial to the organization and exercise of postmodern police power.
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