Cared to Death: The Political Time of Your Life

Foucault Studies 2, 2005

History of the Human Sciences, 2010

This article revisits Arendt’s and Foucault’s converging accounts of modern (bio)politics and the entry of biological life into politics. Agamben’s influential account of these ideas is rejected as a misrepresentation both because it de-historicizes biological/organic life and because it occludes the positivity of that life and thus the discursive appeal and performative force of biopolitics. Through attention to the genealogy of Arendt’s and Foucault’s own ideas we will see that the major point of convergence in their thinking is their insistence upon understanding biological thinking from the inside, in terms of its positivity. Agamben’s assessment of modern politics is closer to Arendt’s than it is to Foucault’s and this marks a fascinating point of disagreement between Arendt and Foucault. Whereas Arendt sees the normalizing force of modern society as being in total opposition to individuality, Foucault posits totalization and individuation as processes of normation, which casts a light upon the relative import they place upon politics and ethics.

Contemporary Political Theory, 2015

The "Dark Side" of Biopolitics. Notes to Agamben's Homo sacer, 2023

This paper discusses Giorgio Agamben's reading of Michel Foucault's biopolitics and biopower. Agamben intertwines Foucault's biopolitics, Hannah Arendt's insights on the distinction between the political realm and the sphere of biological life, Carl Schmitt's notions of "sovereignty" and "exception", and Walter Benjamin's syntagma "bare life" 2. While examining Agamben's use of the notion of biopolitics and the distinction between the two Greek words for life, zoé and bios, this paper will not study Agamben's employ of Carl Schmitt's, Hannah Arendt's 3 , and Walter Benjamin's theorizations on politics, sovereignty, and bare life. On the contrary, it will focus on Agamben's broad use of the concept of biopolitics, which he employs to address the outbreaks of violence against foreigners and citizens, and what he describes as the steady normalization of the state of exception that started at the dawn of the modern age.

Biopolitical Governance. Rowman&Littlefield International, 2018

What is biopolitics? What kind of relationship does biopolitics establish between politics and biology? Although the etymology of the term “biopolitics” seems to suggest a straightforward meaning resulting from the relationship between biological life and politics, the current literature is characterized by a wide variety of definitions. [...] the scale of the problem is well exemplified by the decision of the philosopher Roberto Esposito to begin his major work on the topic with a chapter entitled ‘The Enigma of Biopolitics’. [...] In this chapter I will focus on the work of Foucault, with the aim of explaining the impasse in defining the notion of biopolitics. Following Esposito, I will claim that it is the lack of a correct articulation of the relationship between politics and life that lies at the core of the “enigma of biopolitics.” However, the enigma does not lie in the lack of inquiry into the two terms comprising this term; at stake is a deeper and more complicated issue. I will argue that when politics and biological life meet to constitute the notion of biopolitics they define two opposing theories of the human being. In turn, these two ways of defining the human determine two mutually exclusive approaches to biopolitics. The “enigma of biopolitics” is the name of this fracture.

2018

Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2008

2015

This thesis starts by studying the specificity of Michel Foucault’s account of the emergence of bio-power in contrast to that developed by Giorgio Agamben. It focuses on the mutation of jurisdiction Foucault describes in the first volume of the History of Sexuality, which corresponds to the shift from the law of the sovereign to that of the norm. Challenging the idea that the concept of biological life can be spontaneously used to understand the type of relationship which links modern political power and life, this thesis questions the epistemological implications of this concept by inscribing it within Foucault’s wider description of the emergence of anthropological knowledge. Instead of understanding biopolitical modernity as the expression of the power of the sovereign, this thesis demonstrates that it is not the persistence of sovereign power but its transformation which allows to think the meaning of the concept of life targeted by human sciences. This thesis inscribes the hist...

What relevance does history have for politics? The question is best answered by focusing on a particular case, and examining how a particular historical account can aid in enriching, deepening, informing, and motivating political activity. In this paper, I will this question of the relationship between history and politics as it is broached in the work of Michel Foucault. In particular, I will discuss how Foucault’s genealogical approach to the problem of biopolitics can inform and deepen political strategies surrounding the sphere of politics surrounding health and emerging biotechnologies. I will argue that a historical approach, which tracks the emergence of biopolitics as both a discursive matrix and set of practical institutions within which political problems are determined and discuss, can serve as a crucial perspective for political activity and activism.

Biopolitical Experience situates the idea of 'biopolitics' in the context of Foucault's earlier work on the historicity of life and in relation to a broad problematic of understanding structures, or foyers, of (limit) experience. It explores the relevance of what we might call 'biomentality' for understanding class and nationalism, neo-liberal education policy, cultural racism and 'the problem of racism' in the history of present 'western' feminism. Going beyond lamentation at the horrors of biopolitical domination, the book develops a positive-critique of biopolitical experience: offering explanations as to the enormous appeal of biopolitical discourse; and cultivating an affirmative, ethical and productive response to the technologies of biopolitical racism and securitization. Such a response is not about life escaping power or a retreat from life, but rather involves critical work on the conditions of production of population life (becoming collective). Along the way, the book offers a critique of current uses of the idea of biopolitics in the work of Giorgio Agamben and Nikolas Rose.