Abstract
The large amount of theoretical debates over the notion of biopolitics originally emerges from Michel Fou- cault’s discussions of sovereignty, disciplinary power and biopolitics. Here, biopolitics is conceptualised as a qualitatively di erent and modern regime of power developed in contrast to the model of sovereignty. e ultimate theorist of sovereignty in the canon of Western political thought is omas Hobbes, and in Leviathan two important transitions for the sovereign model takes place: the human being transcends his animal-like condition and becomes a subject, a transition from the image of homo homini lupus to the image of the political subject, and the relation between human beings changes from the of war of all against all to the politics of the state, thus the possibility of politics emerges. Interestingly, as the concept of biopolitics is developed against the backdrop of this theory of sovereignty, both Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben delivers detailed interpretations of Hobbes’ state of nature. By analysing these interpretations, the article tries to understand the emergence of a distinctively biopolitical conception of man and the political in contrast to the conceptions in the paradigm of sovereignty.
Highlights
„Just where it has seemed possible to define man as a political being or living being, a living being that is, on the top of that, a ‘political’ being, there too the essence of the political and, in particular of the state and sovereignty has often been represented in the formless form of animal monstrosity.“ Jacques Derrida, The Beast & the Sovereign
What is the relation between power and life and death? How does scholarship on biopower and biopolitics reshape our understanding of the human being and the political? From the vantage point of the interpretations of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan made by Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, this article tries to answer these questions, and to understand the differences between the model of sovereignty and the new emerging model of biopolitics
By analysing and comparing Foucault’s and Agamben’s different interpretations of the state of nature, the article aim at discussing the following question: Which novel conceptions of the political and human nature are offered by the biopolitical paradigm in contrast to the model of sovereignty?
Summary
„Just where it has seemed possible to define man as a political being or living being, a living being that is, on the top of that, a ‘political’ being, there too the essence of the political and, in particular of the state and sovereignty has often been represented in the formless form of animal monstrosity.“ Jacques Derrida, The Beast & the Sovereign. By analysing and comparing Foucault’s and Agamben’s different interpretations of the state of nature, the article aim at discussing the following question: Which novel conceptions of the political and human nature are offered by the biopolitical paradigm in contrast to the model of sovereignty?
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