The role of discipline, surveillance, and the panopticon in modern society.

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While doing exegetical analysis of at least two theorists from the list of readings, construct and argue a thesis about one of the following issues:
Issue #1: Black Reconstruction and the persistance of racist systems in the 20th and 21st Centuries.
Issue #2: The role of class power in grasping the dynamic forces of society and envisioning a more just world.
Issue #3: The relationship between prisons, the police, and poverty and/ or their social function.
Issue #4: The role of discipline, surveillance, and the panopticon in modern society.
Issue #5: The characteristics of the fascist personality, fascist propoganda devices, and how to resist their spread.
Issue #6: The link between liberal capitalism and heroic-folkish ideology.
Issue #7: How anti-democratic tendencies form, are reproduced, and spread.
Issue #8: The function of law in antogonistic society.
Issue #9: The different forms of feminism and what type of ethics or politics is needed in the face of the reactionary threat.
Issue #10: The significance or implications of an intersectional conception of oppression.
Issue #11: The critique of liberal reformism (e.g., concerning the police, concerning the criminal justice system, concerning corporate power).
Issue #12: White (male) ressentiment in the American context of decline.
Issue #13: The ethical and political consequences of the neoliberalization of society (e.g., preditory debt, colonizing expanded reproduction, privatization, mass poverty).
Issue #14: How to resist patriarchy and/ or racialized capitalism.
Issue #15: The ethico-political consequences of climate disaster.
Issue #16: The indissolubility between ethics, philosophy, and society.
Issue #17: How accumulation by dispossession works.
Issue #18: Choose your own topic. If you choose this option, you are required to submit a thesis statement for approval before writing. When conceiving of your topic, be sure to address how you will incorporate exegetical analysis.
Guidelines:
1). Be sure to quote several passages while doing exegetical analysis.
2). Quoting passages does not make your explanation self-evident, however. Go the further step of explaining why the quote you’ve cited makes the distinction it makes. Said another way, show the reader how it is that specific words illustrate the point that you think Marx is making.
3). Do not just repeat what Kant says. Attempt to put his argument into your own words.
4). Follow out the presuppositions that are not explicit in the text. In other words, certain connections or logical premises will be necessary for Hegel’s argument to work, even though he does not straightforwardly state them. Attempt to flesh out the underlying assumptions that synthesize his argument as a whole.
5). Be generous in your thoughts. There is often more that can be said. Making the point with variations often helps to show that you understand the argument.
6). Assume that your audience or reader knows nothing about the topic. That is, imagine that you are writing to someone who knows nothing about philosophy.
7). Have an introductory paragraph with a thesis statement that clearly designates what your view is and how you will go about arguing it. Have a concluding paragraph that restates your thesis and rounds off what you have accomplished along the way.
8). Your paper should be 5 to 6 pages in length, in Times New Roman, double spaced.
9). Following the grading rubric, provide a short paragraph that describes what grade you think you deserve.
Sources/Readings:
Marcuse: “The Struggle against Liberalism in the Totalitarian View of the State”
Du Bois: Black Reconstruction in America, 671-708
Adorno: “The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas,” 11-37
Foucault: “Panopticism,” 195-228
Melossi: The Prison and the Factory, 27-82
Vitale: The End of Policing, “The Police are not here to Protect you”
James: “Radicalizing Feminism”
Butler: Gender Trouble, 1-34
Wang: “Racialized Accumulation by Dispossession in the Age of Finance Capital,” 99-150
Neale: “Social Collapse and Climate Breakdown”
ABSOLUTELY NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED

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Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell. 

In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.


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God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.

Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.

To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.

 

References

Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.

Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.

Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.

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