Banu Bargu is a U.S.-based political theorist and professor of

History of Consciousness History of Consciousness is the name of a department in the Humanities Division of the University of California, Santa Cruz with a 50+ year history of interdisciplinary research and student training in "established and emergent disciplines and fiel ...

and

Politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

Career

Bargu completed her B.A. at

Boğaziçi University Boğaziçi University ( tr, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi), also known as Bosphorus University, is a major research university in Istanbul, Turkey. Its main campus is located on the European side of the Bosphorus, Bosphorus strait. It has six facult ...

in 1997, where she also completed her M.A. in Political Science and International Relations in 2000. She then studied at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

, where she completed her Ph.D. in Government in 2008. Bargu taught at The New School in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

for a decade before entering the

department at the

in 2018. In her 2014 paper "Sovereignty as Erasure: Rethinking Enforced Disappearances" she discusses Kemal Birlik, who disappeared while in Turkish custody. In 2014, Bargu published her first book, ''Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons'' through

Columbia University Press Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fiel ...

. The book is about the Turkish Death Fast. Bargu discusses what she calls the "weaponization of life", beginning with the imprisonment of leftist political prisoners in Turkey and then broadening her analysis to discuss

Hamas Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...

PKK The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla movement, which historically operated throughout Kurdistan, but is now primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of sout ...

, and other organizations. Hannah Gehl writes that "Bargu wishes to communicate that self-destructive acts and the use of human weapons is a logical and premeditated political statement against the asymmetric distribution of political power". Bargu develops a concept of "necroresistance" which Anna Terwiel has described as "a new understanding of martyrdom as a radical challenge to the modern state". It received the First Book award by the

American Political Science Association The American Political Science Association (APSA) is a professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States. Founded in 1903 in the Tilton Memorial Library (now Tilton Hall) of Tulane University in New Orleans, ...

. She subsequently edited the volume, ''Feminism, Capitalism, and Critique: Essays in Honor of Nancy Fraser.'' The essays in the anthology examine the work of

Nancy Fraser Nancy Fraser (; born May 20, 1947) is an American philosopher, critical theorist, feminist, and the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science and professor of philosophy at The New School in New York City.Jadžić, Milo� ...

. It was published by Palgrave in 2017.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bargu, Banu Living people Political philosophers Year of birth missing (living people) Cornell University alumni