Theoretical synoptic essay on an empirical event (Please read the instructions for details.)

Choose a form or forms of theory (Foucault, Hardt and Negri, Agamben, Arendt, Blackman, Bataille), which can help you to analyse the event you have selected and discuss your choice.

While you may be focusing on a particular theorist or theorists, the essay should reflect on the kind of theory it is/ they are (ie. under which of the course themes were these ideas discussed?).

So, for example, if you find that the kind of theory that is most suited to your problem is a speculative kind, you will be looking at the work of Hardt and Negri and/or Agamben, but the essay should also give some thought to what it means to speculate and why this approach is particularly suited to your problem. In responding to this, your essay might discuss other theoretical approaches that are less relevant and why this is so (eg. you may feel that your problem requires a general form of diagnosis rather than the kind of precise history that Foucault carries out).