John Clare and Biopolitics

What is it about?

My article examines John Clare's (a rural peasant poet of the early nineteenth century) poems on animals. I look at how his poem "The Badger" uses personification to force us to question how we treat animals. I tie this in to the enclosure process--dividing up the common land--in the British countryside during the time that Clare wrote his poetry.

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Why is it important?

My poem seeks to provide an in-depth analysis of "The Badger," one of Clare's best known, and most shocking, poems. I tie it into recent discussions about "biopolitics," which philosopher Michel Foucault defines as a national politics that seeks to maintain the life of the human species. Foucault focuses on human beings in his analysis of biopolitics but as people like Clare show biopolitics affected animals too.