Università Roma Tre

This course explores narratives of coercive violence and creaturely vulnerability against the background of unfolding planetary environmental catastrophe. We focus on three broad themes: (a) normative ideas of man [anthropos] and their role in biopolitical frameworks of mastery and subjection; (b) literary representations of uninhabitable and broken worlds; (c) cultural critiques of authoritarianism: a political system that demands complete subjection to the government’s commands, does not permit any dissidence or separation of powers, and employs coercive power to preserve the political status quo. We will focus on seven works of narrative fiction – four novels, one short story, and one film. We will discuss how these works achieve a comprehensive understanding of the social mechanisms and psychological effects of biopolitical violence and how they attempt to reveal and resist the normalization of authoritarianism in everyday language and social life.

• Franz Kafka, “Ein Bericht für eine Akademie” (1917)
• George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
• Paolo Volponi, Il pianeta irritabile (1978)
• Michael Haneke (dir.), Le temps du loup (2003)
• Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006)
• Sandra Newman, Julia (2023)