Copyright (c) 2013 Macalester College All rights reserved. http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/hmcs_honors Recent documents in Honors Projects en-us Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:28:36 PDT 3600 http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/hmcs_honors/3 http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/hmcs_honors/3 Wed, 12 May 2010 08:10:48 PDT It is a tenet of post-structuralist theory that discursive series fail in their attempts to constitute themselves as totalities. A system can fail in two distinct ways—from Kant’s dynamic and mathematic failures of reason, to Jacques Lacan’s equation of the two failures of language with the two failures (male and female) of sex. Biopolitical theory offers the most recent account of failure and collapse, now on the geopolitical scale. Given that the biopolitical subject too is sexed, this thesis asks the question: How does biopolitics fail? Franz Kafka’s aborted novels offer a premonition to a possible answer.

]]> Ross G. Shields http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/hmcs_honors/1 http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/hmcs_honors/1 Thu, 04 May 2006 06:56:01 PDT Relying on a close reading of the primetime television soap opera The O.C., this thesis argues that Jewish identity on television has become perfectly compatible with normative Whiteness. While The O.C. is filled with signifiers of Jewishness, they are cultural rather than religious and are celebrated rather than rejected by WASPs. This analysis highlights the way Jews have been transformed from racialized “Others” in popular culture to Whites who embrace Jewish cultural styles, especially Jewish humor.

]]> Tamara Olson