The Sex in Their Violence: Eroticizing Biopower

ABSTRACT: This article gives an overview of the influence of the work of Michel Foucault on the philosophy of Agamben. Discussed are Foucault’s influence on the Homo Sacer cycle, on (the development) of Agamben’s notion of power (and on his closely related notion of free-dom and art of life), as well as on Agamben’s philosophy of language and methodology. While most commentaries focus on Agamben’s interpretation of Foucault’s concept of bio-power, his work also contains many interesting references to Foucault on freedom and possi-bilities—and I think that it is here that Foucault’s influence on Agamben is most deeply felt. This article focuses on the shifts Agamben takes while looking for the Entwicklungsfähigkeit in the work of Foucault. Keywords: Foucault, Agamben, art of life, freedom, Entwicklungsfähigkeit

Theory & Event, 2013

This article argues that the relation between the biopolitical functions of life and death and the apparatuses of sexuality and race through which they operate is a contingent one.

This article reviews recent literature on the political ecologies of conservation and environmental change mitigation, highlighting the biopolitical stakes of many writings in this field. Although a large and apparently growing number of political ecologists engage the concept of biopower directly – in its Foucauldian, Agambenian, and various other formulations – recent writings across the humanities and social sciences by scholars utilizing an explicitly biopolitical lens provide us with an array of concepts and research questions that may further enrich writings within political ecology. Seeking to extend dialogue between scholars of biopolitics, of political ecology, and of both, then, this article surveys both new and shifting contours of the various ways in which contemporary political ecologies increasingly compel us to bring the very lives of various human and nonhuman populations, as Foucault once put it, "into the realm of explicit calculations." In doing so, 'new frontiers' of biopolitical inquiry are examined related to: i) species, varieties, or 'multiple modes' of governmentality and biopower; ii) critical (ecosystem) infrastructure, risk, and 'reflexive' biopolitics; iii) environmental history, colonialism, and the genealogies of biopower, and iv) the proliferation of related neologisms, such as ontopower and geontopower. Cet article est une revue de la littérature récente sur les écologies politiques de la conservation et de l'atténuation des changements environnementaux, qui met en évidence les enjeux biopolitiques de nombreux écrits dans ce domaine. De nombreux écologistes politiques engagent directement le concept de biopouvoir-dans ses formulations foucaldienne, agambénienne et diverses autres. Des écrits récents dans le domaine des sciences humaines et sociales, élaborés par des chercheurs utilisant une optique explicitement biopolitique, nous offrent un ensemble de concepts et de questions de recherche susceptibles d'enrichir davantage les écrits sur l'écologie politique. Cet article examine les différentes manières dont les écologies politiques contemporaines nous obligent à amener la vie de diverses populations humaines et non humaines, comme Foucault l'a dit, «dans le domaine des calculs explicites». Il élargit le dialogue entre les chercheurs en biopolitique et en écologie politique. Ce faisant, les «nouvelles frontières» de l'enquête biopolitique sont examinées concernant: 1) les espèces, les variétés ou les «modes multiples» de gouvernementalité et de biopouvoir; 2) infrastructure écosystémique critique, risque et biopolitique «réflexive»; 3) l'histoire environnementale, le colonialisme et les généalogies du biopouvoir; 4) la prolifération de concepts connexes, comme ontopower et geontopower." Este artículo hace una revisión de la literatura reciente sobre las ecologías políticas de la conservación y la mitigación del cambio ambiental; además, destaca los intereses en biopolítica de muchos escritos en este campo. A pesar de que un gran y aparentemente creciente número de autores en ecología política involucran el concepto de biopoder directamente-en sus formulaciones de acuerdo a Foucault, Agamben y otros-, escritos recientes de académicos en humanidades y ciencias sociales que utilizan explícitamente un lente biopolítico, proveen de una variedad de conceptos y preguntas de investigación que pueden enriquecer escritos de la ecología política. En la búsqueda por ampliar el diálogo entre académicos de biopolítica, ecología política, y dentro de ambos, este artículo explora nuevos y cambiantes contornos de las diferentes formas en que las ecologías políticas contemporáneas nos obligan cada vez más, a presentar las vidas de varias poblaciones humanas y no humanas, como Foucault planteó alguna vez, "en el dominio de cálculos explícitos." De este modo, 'nuevas fronteras' de investigación biopolítica son examinadas en relación a: i) especies, variedades, o 'múltiples modos' de gubernamentalidad y biopoder; ii) infraestructura (ecosistémica) crítica, riesgo, y biopolíticas 'reflexivas'; iii) historia ambiental, colonialismo, y las genealogías del biopoder, y iv) la proliferación de neologismos relacionados, tales como ontopoder y geontopoder.

Agamben's extended, multivolume Homo Sacer project, wherein he describes the discomfiting totalitarian forces that underpin the modern democratic state, revolves around three central images: the sovereign (and the sovereign exception), bare life (zoē), and the homo sacer of the project's title. In a process that Agamben demonstrates is as old as politics itself, the sovereign power establishes and maintains authority for itself through the claim to a state of exception, wherein the sovereign sets itself, the primary product of politics, outside the very realm of politics and law it would seek to control.

In this dissertation I will analyse the responses of three political theorists, Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and Hannah Arendt, to the antinomical duality of contemporary biopolitical discourse. In doing so I hope to demonstrate not only the existence of a thanatopolitical logic within biopolitical rationalities, but also examine how this paradox may be overcome. Following an in depth analysis of both Bios by Esposito and Agamben's revolutionary messianism, I will propose Arendt's concept of natality as a principle which effectively synthesis' the messianic with biopolitics; allowing us to reconnect biological life with freedom and politics, whilst also overcoming the violent duality of biopolitics, and thereby avoiding 'biopolitical catastrophe'.

Exemplaria, 2006

Beytulhikme An International Journal of Philosophy, 2017

In this paper, considering the fact that special forms of dying and killing are mostly seen in a shadowy zone or blurred boundary between life and death, I shall attempt to find a compromise between Michel Foucault (bio-politics) and Giorgio Agamben’s (thanatopolitics) considerations of biopolitics in the case of euthanasia. In this respect, believing that this article requires a historical backround, I shall start with a brief history of euthanasia and suicide in order to understand the present juridico-medico-political complex from which the sovereign power derives its philosophical underpinnings and theoretical justifications today; and show that the relationship power and death has always been very problematic. Secondly, I will focus on the meaning(s) of the disappearance of death in the context of Foucauldian biopolitics and conclude that, in contrast to Foucault’s consideration, something akin to re-discovery of death has taken place in the Western world since the mid-twentieth century. Finally, in the third and last part of the article, I will put forward that Agamben, by introducing the concept life unworthy of being lived, was successful in completing what is missing, that is the politics of death, in Foucault’s notion of biopolitics with reference to the problem of euthanasia.

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

This paper will revisit my thesis to reformulate a new understanding of how essential the collaboration of Michel Foucault’s Biopolitics (2003) (which is not discussed in my thesis) is to a (re)conceptualization of necropolitics, population regulation, and life optimization by the state/sovereignty in order to better understand contemporary forms of the subjugation of life to the power of death. I will utilize biopower as articulated by Foucault, and necropower as mapped out by Mbembe’s description of late modernity state violence (or violence under contemporary sovereignty) as methodological tools to examine, Why and for what reasons do schools offer poor children free meals, take home laptops, free eye exams and dental check-ups while engaging in symbolic-objective-structural violence and implementing, securitization, militarizing and policing poor black youth bodies in the same spaces? these important conceptual lenses are essential for us to understand of the totality of all existence, life and/or/both death. By connecting biopower with necropower , I can attempt to unpack some of these questions : What does it mean to have black skin in a world governed by an advanced neoliberal capitalism and white supremacy? “What role do schools and other educational institutions play in an era where black bodies in urban cities are experiencing redundancy, surplus, disposability and dispossessed subjectivities?” I want to focus on what I think the purpose of schooling is : the mass extermination and life management/optimization of all poor, female, queer, black life/bodies subjectivities. After I finished my thesis I begin exploring how a black social death is lived through a black social life and a black social life is lived though a black social death (Saxton, 2012). For me, black bodies are engaged and disengaged in a politics that is neither a pure form of life (let live, make life) or death (make death or let die), but a complex management of the two (Bhungalia, 2012). I will analyze this necro-bio dynamic as remains under/un-theorized, and unexamined in current education scholarship, thus, rendering black subjectivities obsolete. This leaves our analysis of contemporary forms of sovereignty in education. The necro-biopower collaboration has a home in critical/political/Marxist/Feminist/Black geography, Social theory and Black Studies but in radical/critical education scholarship only one scholar to date, Tyson E. Lewis (2006, 2010) has theorized concepts of Agamben, Foucault to coin biopedagogical and necropedagogical/thanatopedagogy (a pedagogy to end all education life).