The aff’s mechanism of reversing a Supreme Court decision uniquely links.

"Intellectual property is power, but what kind of power is it, and what does it do? Building on the work of Michel Foucault, this study examines different ways of understanding power in copyright, trademark and patent policy: as law, as promotion of public welfare, and as promotion of neoliberal privatization. It argues that intellectual property policy is moving toward neoliberalism, even as that move is broadly contested in everything from resistance movements to Supreme Court decisions. The struggle to conceptualize IP matters, because different regimes of power imagine different kinds of subjects, from the rights-bearing citizen to the economic agent of neoliberalism. As a central part of the regulation of contemporary economies, IP is central to all aspects of our lives. It matters for the works we create, the brands we identify and the medicines we consume. The kind of subjects it imagines are the kinds of subjects we become"

The CUP page for the book has not just the text as a whole but the chapters (the main ones are a theoretical discussion, and one each on copyright, trademark and patent), and each of the chapters has an abstract. For now, here's a little text from the introductory chapter that should give a better idea of what I'm up to. As you'll see, I want to say something about IP, of course, but also about how I think biopolitics works (in both what I call its earlier, "public," form, and current neoliberalism) and about the fundamental but neglected importance of including law and legal institutions in our genealogical work:

"The core of my argument is that the kind of power expressed in IP is subtly changing. Initial evidence for this claim is that new doctrinal developments have been difficult to incorporate into traditional models of IP. For example, retroactive copyright extension is hard to square with a theory that says copyright is about incentives to create new works. Presumably, Walt Disney will be unmotivated by any changes in IP today. Trademark dilution, which allows action against expression that damages a brand’s image in consumers’ minds, is difficult to square with the standard theory that says that trademark is about avoiding consumer confusion. And the patentability of living organisms and (until recently) isolated genetic fragments is difficult to reconcile with the traditional view that products of nature should not receive patent protections. In cases such as these, I will argue, it is necessary to recognize that IP is performing a different and new social function, one that requires a rethinking of the kind of power expressed by IP laws and regulations.