BA, MA, PhD (Candidate)
Instructor, Political Science
School of Social Sciences
Political Science
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
604.986.1911 ext. 3076
Fir Building, room FR441
michaellaurence@capilanou.ca
Education
PhD, Political Science, Western University, Candidate.
MA, Political Science, Western University, 2009.
BA, Political Science, University of Guelph, 2004.
"Education, I believe, is a collective and embodied practice, which, in its best moments, can foster a creative opening towards new possibilities for thought and action."
Bio
Michael Laurence (MA, Western University, 2009) is a political scientist whose main research interests are in the field of critical political theories.
His work centers upon the question of what democracy can mean in a world constituted and saturated by relations of power and domination.
The political content and implications of the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault are of specific concern to this question.
Laurence is working on a manuscript that investigates the connections between Foucault's writings on power relations and the major schools of contemporary democratic theory.
Other areas of interest include political ideologies, the history of political thought, the history of capitalism, the politics of affect and critical pedagogy.
I teach political theory, Canadian politics, and international relations. In the classroom, I try to use a wide variety of methods, technologies, and materials, including scholarly texts, literature, podcasts, television and film.
I believe that creative openings and possibilities can emerge in the classroom when different methods and materials are combined, but also when different fields and subfields are compelled to abandon their solitudes and speak to one another.
Laurence, Michael R. Democracy After Foucault: Towards a Democratic Analytics of Power, Desire, and the Subject. Manuscript in Progress.
Sabrina Caitlin Higgins, Aurora Camaño, and Michael R. Laurence. Reimagining the Digital Mary Project as a Counter-Practice Within/Against the Neoliberal University, in S.C. Higgins and C.A.M. Gardner (eds), Ancient Pasts for Modern Audiences: Public Scholarship and the Mediterranean World (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2024), ms. of 16 pp. + 3 Figs.
Laurence, Michael R. Speed the Collapse? Using Marx to Rethink the Politics of Accelerationism, Theory & Event 20:2 (2017): 409-425.
Laurence, Michael R. Why We Love to Hate the Wolf (Of Wall Street): Using Georges Bataille and Friedrich Nietzsche to Critique of the Function of Moral Ideology Under Late Capitalism, New Political Science, 38:1 (2016): 81-99.
Laurence, Michael R. Biopolitics and State Regulation of Human Life. Entry in Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science. Ed. Sandy Maisel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Laurence, Michael R. Nietzsche, Morgenthau, and the Roots of Realism. In E-International Relations. June 24, 2015.
Laurence, Michael R. Democratic Theory. Entry in Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science. Ed. Sandy Maisel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015 (last updated: 2018).