Notion Of Biopolitics Research Articles

Por uma filosofia política do luto

Este artigo se propõe a uma revisão bibliográfica do tema do luto na obra de Judith Butler tomando como argumento central a ideia de que o luto é o conceito em torno do qual a autora organiza sua filosofia. Ao entrelaçar reivindicação de direito ao luto público, crítica à violência de Estado, despossessão de si e interdependência, Butler desenha uma proposição ética a partir da condição de enlutável, dada desde o início da vida. A condição de enlutável nas vidas é desigualmente enquadrada e, nesse sentido, Butler procurar revelar os quadros que sustentam a condição de possibilidade de manter certas vidas como precárias. No percurso do texto, articulo ao tema do luto em Butler com as noções de biopolítica (Foucault), necropolítica (Mbembe) e estado de exceção (Agamben) a fim para refletir como a pandemia de covid-19 nos expõe a uma condição de vulnerabilidade global e, ao mesmo tempo, acentua desigualdades entre as vidas precárias.

O sertão entre as margens e o centro do mundo atual: notas sobre Bacurau

Em três momentos, o texto discute o filme Bacurau dos cineastas brasileiros Kleber Mendonça Filho e Juliano Dornelles, tomando como fio condutor a ideia das relações entre margem e centro, entre local e universal. Em um primeiro momento, estabelecemos paralelos entre aspectos do projeto estético-políico deste filme e do movimento do Tropicalismo dos finais dos anos 60, com o qual ele dialoga, sobretudo a partir da ideia de justaposição formal de opostos. Em segundo lugar, mostramos que o enredo do filme articula os polos do regional (o sertão) e do universal (o mundo contemporâneo), entendendo o filme como um diagnóstico do presente esclarecido a partir das noções de biopolítica, necropolítica e neoliberalismo. No terceiro momento, analisamos a construção da vila de Bacurau como comunidade queer, heterotópica e marginal, desviante em relação às normas patriarcais hegemônicas quanto às relações entre os gêneros e quanto à orientação sexual. Na conclusão, argumentamos que o a violência presente no filme não constitui nem um projeto político determinado, nem tampouco serve a propósitos mercadológicos. Por outro lado, a violência contida nos atos de resistência da comunidade está a serviço da garantia de suas formas de vida marginal.

Biopolitical bordering: Enacting populations as intelligible objects of government

Since Foucault introduced the notion of biopolitics, it has been fiercely debated—usually in highly generalized terms—how to interpret and use this concept. This article argues that these discussions need to be situated, as biopolitics have features that do not travel from one site to the next. This becomes apparent if we attend to an aspect of biopolitics that has only received scant attention so far: the knowledge practices required to constitute populations as intelligible objects of government. To illustrate this point, the article focuses on processes of biopolitical bordering: the delineation of the target population that is to be known via statistical practices. Drawing on the example of Estonia I show that methodological decisions involved in this work have important biopolitical implications as they affect the size and composition of the population, thus shaping the design of programmes of government aiming at its regulation.

The Biopolitics of Migration: Ecuadorian Foreign Policy and Venezuelan Migratory Crisis

ABSTRACT Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics serves to analyze Ecuador's foreign policy towards the Venezuelan migration crisis. First, I discuss the interrelations between the fields of border and mobility studies to understand the regulation of mobilities by practices such as border management. Second, I explore the contributions of post-structuralism to foreign policy analysis. Third, I study the concepts of biopower and biopolitics in central works written by Foucault such as The History of Sexuality (1990), Society Must Be Defended (2003) and Security, Territory and Population (2007). Fourth, I examine the causes of the migration crisis of Venezuelans in the region. Fifth, I analyze the securitization of Venezuelan migratory flows in Ecuador. Based on the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics, I argue that what contributes to the extreme securitization of the massive migration of Venezuelans, and therefore the Ecuadorian foreign policy’s response to this phenomenon, is the result of biopower. This form of power emphasizes on the control of populations in a given territory. This article analyzes the content of the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility and several press articles to discuss the biopolitical measures taken by the Ecuadorian foreign policy to control the migration of Venezuelans.

A fragile threshold: tracing Agamben’s reply to Derrida’s critique

ABSTRACTThe present work contends that Derrida’s critique of Agamben in The Beast and the Sovereign reveals a fundamental misconception of Agamben’s formulation of the notion of biopolitics. Agamben differentiates the term ‘biopolitics’ from biologism and argues instead that biopolitics ought to be viewed through the metaphysical inheritance of the ontological division already present in Aristotle’s articulation of the notion of life. Derrida’s position is one that refutes any such division. Through Agamben’s reading of Aristotle’s uses of the terms zoè and bios, and the distinction Aristotle makes between the simple fact of living (tou zen) and living well (tou eu zen), the article brings to light the fragility of the threshold while illustrating its operative function in the Aristotelian apparatus. Derrida contends that Agamben’s notion of biopolitics does not advance the Heideggerian discourse concerning the definition of man as animal rationale. The article argues that, on the contrary, for Agamben, Heidegger’s position remains biopolitical and does not overcome the metaphysical problem of presupposition. This article traces and unearths Agamben’s hidden reply to Derrida and draws a connection between Agamben’s formulation of a form-of-life and Deleuze’s conceptualisation of life as absolute immanence.

Corpo-políticas de la vulnerabilidad o de cómo la materia resiste al discurso

El artículo ofrece una reflexión sobre las corpo-políticas de la vulnerabilidad. Remite a la concepción foucaultiana de la biopolítica y, sobre todo y de forma explícita, a la actualización y correctivo que de ella lleva a cabo Achille Mbembé con su noción de necropolítica. Tomando la vulnerabilidad como eje principal que dice una determinación ontológica que va a ser política, se analiza en clave interseccional la materialidad del cuerpo que, por ser radicalmente singular, excede al discurso y escapa de ese modo a la lógica del reconocimiento. Finalmente, se pone a prueba el análisis con relación a la película Eva no duerme.

A Commentary: The Position of Ethnic Minorities From the Connection Between Theory of Justice and Good Governance

Ethnic minorities are sometimes presented as “outsiders,” “awkward,” “alien,” and many other pejoratives by the “leviathan of majority”. This article will theoretically analyze how ethnic minorities struggle to pursue justice and access their right to good governance. Rawls’s theory of justice simply seems as the support of “majorities” sense of justice, which disregards the sense of justice by minority. Because of the color of their skin, language, cultural identities, and national origin, ethnic minorities are trapped under the battle of power holders that can be explained by the notion of biopolitics. Biopolitics is a method of investigating the interconnection between human body and power relation. Furthermore, the position of ethnic minorities in these power battles is appeared such homo sacer. Homo sacer is one who has been condemned and may be killed by anybody in a figure of Roman law. The concept of homo sacer can be used to explain the position of ethnic minorities who have always been victimized. In addition, to establish a concrete example of a case about problems faced by ethnic minorities, I will discuss the protection of ethnic minorities through the framework of law and democracy in Indonesia and the Netherlands.

Governing vulnerability: The biopolitics of conservation and climate in upland Southeast Asia

Forest dependent communities are increasingly at the centre of intensifying global aspirations to alleviate both climate change vulnerability and environmental degradation. In Southeast Asia in particular, varied forms of conservation practice fuse concern for biodiversity outcomes with the desire to support ‘resilience’ and build ‘capacity’ in the face of environmental change. Drawing on Foucault's notion of biopolitics, this article explores the consequences of efforts to govern both forest decline and human vulnerability. Through this framing, we consider indigenous experiences with the 1997/8 El Niño event in the southern Philippines where conservation efforts have produced unintended outcomes for upland households negotiating the impacts of extreme drought. We demonstrate that efforts to comprehensively reform indigenous life as part of a twinned concern for environmental decline and human vulnerability have produced acute food insecurity during El Niño events by diminishing swiddening practices and related lifeways that buffer against extreme drought – some of the very environmental changes that forest management efforts had hoped to buffer indigenous households against. These insights offer a bridge between contemporary Foucauldian treatments of ‘vulnerability’ as a potent discursive construct and work within political ecology that aims to empirically understand uneven experiences of environmental change.

Europeanizing the Danish School through National Testing: Standardized Assessment Scales and the Anticipation of Risky Populations

This paper explores “the peopling of Europe through data practices” in relation to standardized testing of students in Denmark. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a central component of Danish and European education infrastructures. In Denmark, mediocre PISA results spurred the introduction of national testing. With inspiration from Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics, this paper analyzes how complementary Danish national test assessment scales make up population objects and student subjects and how these scales are aligned with European and transnational standards. A norm scale, standardized against the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) grading scale, enacts a population whose performance can be tracked over time. A criteria scale introduces categories describing skills and enacts a moving student subject whose progression can be tracked. This paper argues that the three assessment scales enact the student population as bound to the nation and as simultaneously constituted in relation to transnational European categories and imaginaries of competition. As part of this, this paper discusses how the national test and PISA are used to single out students of non-European background, anticipated to be low PISA achievers and nonparticipants in a European knowledge economy.

토마스 모어의 『유토피아』에 나타난 사목 권력과 통치성 : 미셸 푸코의 철학과 비교연구

The primary purpose of this essay is to analyze Thomas More’s Utopia in terms of biopolitics and governmentality that Michel Foucault theorized in his lectures at College de France. More’s story of an imaginary commonwealth is an illustration of early modern pastoral power that foreshadows the rise of (early) modern “governmentality.” Pastoral power as a sort of governing technology claimed that people should be governed just as Christ as an ideal pastor governs his flock (Christian subjects), and its economic ideology is the core of what St. Paul called oikonomia. Yet this religious governmentality began to be secularized from the sixteenth century and formed secular governmental rationality, and I would argue that More’s Utopia is a discussion of this governing technology developed from this pastoral power. This essay, in this light, has a dual purpose. First this article surveys and analyzes pastoralism and governmentality that operate as biopower in More’s work. Utopia has been read as a discussion of ideal state and a society based on proto-communism, but seen from a different angle it is a representation of Renaissance England’s governmentality. Nonetheless, a more important project of this essay is to critically anatomize the paradox of Foucault’s notion of biopolitics by surveying Utopia from a biopolitical perspective. Foucault was not able to properly answer why a power that “make[s] live and let[s] die” uncannily transforms into thanato-political and sovereign power that “take[s] life or let[s] live.” Reading More’s discussion of an ideal commonwealth allows us to grasp that a society aiming at utmost security based on biopolitics uncannily transforms into an extremely controlled society ruled by thanato-politics.

La voluntad de saber como instancia de la investigación foucaultiana sobre la biopolítica y la política

Este artículo pretende realizar una hermenéutica de La voluntad de saber (1976) que permita comprender esta obra en su doble condición de constituir tanto el primer resultado de una investigación referida a una genealogía o historia de la sexualidad en el Occidente moderno, como el marco en el que Foucault desarrolla su análisis sobre la biopolítica y la gubernamentalidad y, sobre todo, en el que presenta las nociones de aquello que entiende por política. A tal fin, el artículo analiza, en primer lugar, la especificidad de La voluntad de saber como primer jalón de una genealogía de la sexualidad en el Occidente moderno. En segundo lugar, examina el emplazamiento de La voluntad de saber como inauguración oficial de los estudios sobre biopolítica y como punto de clivaje entre dos nociones fundamentales que, en opinión del autor, Foucault sostiene acerca de la política: una de carácter diagnóstico (ligada a la nociones de biopolítica y de gubernamentalidad) y otra de carácter propositivo (vinculada a los modos de subjetivación y las prácticas de sí). Finalmente, se subraya la relación de la subjetividad con los juegos de verdad, atravesada por el problema del poder-gobierno, como la piedra de toque de las preocupaciones y los propósitos generales de las investigaciones foucaultianas.

Economia ambiental e biopolítica: a experiência de uma escola colombiana

O presente artigo pretende problematizar, como um dos desafios da contemporaneidade, a educação da sociedade acerca das mudanças climáticas. Busca compreender, assim, como se constituem as novas configurações de economia ambiental, em meio à noção de biopolítica de Michel Foucault. Tal estudo é decorrente de investigações realizadas no Grupo de Pesquisa Currículo, Espaço, Movimento (CEM/CNPq/UNIVATES), cujo objetivo é, a partir do pensamento da Filosofia da Diferença e das teorizações curriculares pós-estruturalistas, ampliar as perspectivas de entendimento do currículo, bem como seus movimentos e cruzamentos, tomando como investigação três espaços escolares e dois não escolares. Desse modo, nesta pesquisa interessa, especialmente, abordar um dos espaços de investigação que é a Escuela Pedagógica Experimental (EPE), em Bogotá, Colômbia. A referida escola inseriu em suas práticas pedagógicas alguns princípios de economia sustentável através de projetos realizados em parceria com a comunidade educativa e outros agentes externos. Assim, pretende-se pensar o projeto de economia ambiental de tal espaço educativo, em meio à noção de biopolítica de Michel Foucault.

‘Social investment’ as political economy of education: Recent changes in early childhood education in New Zealand

The newly coined policy of social investment is an economic argument for targeting state investment to the most needy. I use Foucault’s notion of biopolitics in a discursive analysis of recent New Zealand policy documents pertaining to a discrete group of ‘vulnerable children’. I further argue that the Foucauldian metaphor of state institutions as war-like gives knowledge/power to investment as efficient government.

The Construction of Lay Rescuers in Bystander CPR Classes

There are many situations in society and life in which the body is expected to play an important role for the acquisition of particular skills. This article reports on a study of such a situation, namely when information about first aid and how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CRP) is mediated to nonmedical professionals. The aim of the article is to tease out how different modes of informing feature in first aid and CPR classes for the lay public in order to transform participants in such classes into CPR-trained lay rescuers ready to intervene in cases of what is suspected to be cardiac arrests. The understanding of the role of the body in information-related activities is based on a practice-theoretical approach. How information figures in the practice of first aid and CPR training is also discussed in light of Foucault’s notions of biopolitics and self-technologies. The practice-theoretical approach illuminates how bodies are en-twined in information activities, and the notions of biopolitics and self-technology illuminate how the practice of bystander CPR training instantiates control through the different kinds of informing activities that occur in classes. This study is based on material gathered through observations in bystander CPR classes.

Between Foucault and Agamben: An Overview of the Problem of Euthanasia in the context of Biopolitics

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.

Migration and security: in search of reconciliation

In this paper a case is made for the necessity of an inter-disciplinary treatment of the migration phenomenon. The paper addresses the relation between migration and security from a reconciliatory perspective after a brief analysis of the migration-security nexus and how migration got securitised. Based on the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics, one can argue that what contributes heavily to the securitisation of migration is the emergence of biopower and biopolitics which are primarily concerned with the control over lives of the population within a given territory. This makes states and societies consider migration as a matter that should be under control, since it is related to the hygiene of the population and nationals of a given state. I, therefore, discuss the EU and other European countries’ policies regarding migration and how biopolitics have influenced securitising the EU’s migration policies. The main argument is that migration can, and should, be treated as an advantage rather than a threat, though it does not deny the security concerns that alway accompany such social phenomenon. The impact of culture and history on migration policies, and how identity politics shape a given country’s policies are discussed. Perceiving migration as either a threat or an opportunity, the way in which a country perceives migrants shapes its migration policies, whether restrictive or multiculturally-tolerant.

Property, Power, and Revolution in Russia, 1917-2017: Institutional Transformations in the Longue Durree

This paper unfolds an analytical perspective on the evolution of property rights in Russia from Tsarist times until today, combining the theory on violence and institutions suggested by North, Wallis and Weingast with Foucault’s analysis of power in society, especially his notions of biopolitics and governmentality. I argue that a historical constant is the subordination of property rights to the biopolitics of catch-up modernization, independent from their specific form, private or public (state-owned). This is embedded in the persistence of informal and ideational structures of Empire, manifest in peculiar forms of governmentality. The bridging concept between these different phenomena is that of ‘state capacity’. State ownership under socialism and Stalinism emerged as the default solution to the challenge of weak state capacity in the Empire. In Tsarist times, the transfer of absolute private property rights from the West had resulted in a developmental stalemate. However, after the biopolitics of the war economy had shifted to cold war rivalry, socialist planning was a mere formal shell in which the informal structures of governmentality in the Soviet Empire evolved. These provided the setting in which the privatization of the 1990s resulted in the emergence of an oligarchic ownership regime, eventually morphing into Putinist state capitalism which can be interpreted as a ‘neo-patrimonial regime’. These developments can be explained by the role of rent distribution in stabilizing intra-elite conflicts. With Imperial structures still prevalent, informal governmentality remains an important means to make up for weak state capacity, thus also weakening private property rights in their role of drawing boundaries between the political and the economic system.

Masses, Medicine and Race. The Biopolitics of Monstrosity in Third Reich Propaganda Films

The author examines body politics in Nazi cinema and propaganda movies (medical short films and materials filmed in the Polish Ghettos) in terms of constructing the visual identity of a nation in opposition to the allegedly non-normative bodies of Jews and mentally ill persons. The author connects the visual material with notions of biopolitics (Foucault, Agamben, Esposito).

Becoming patriots in Russia: biopolitics, fashion, and nostalgia

The article seeks to explore the common ground between biopolitics, fashion, patriotism and nostalgia. Taking off from the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics as a control apparatus exerted over a population, I provide an insight into the modern construction of the Russian nation, where personal and collective sacrifice, traditional femininity and masculinity, orthodox religion, and the Great Patriotic War become the basis for patriotism. On carefully chosen case studies, I will show how the state directly and indirectly regulates people's lives by producing narratives, which are translated (in some cases designers act as mouthpieces for the state demographic or military politics) into fashionable discourses and, with a core of time, create specific gender norms – women are seen as fertile mothers giving birth to new soldiers, while men are shown as fighters and defenders of their nation. In the constructed discourses, conservative ideals become a ground for the creation of an idea of a nation as one biological body, where brothers and sisters are united together. In these fashionable narratives, people's bodies become a battlefield of domestic politics. Fashion produces a narrative of a healthy nation to ensure the healthy work- and military force.

Bringing the state into the clinic? Incorporating the rapid diagnostic test for malaria into routine practice in Tanzanian primary healthcare facilities

ABSTRACTThe roles that rapid, point-of-care tests will play in healthcare in low-income settings are likely to expand over the coming years. Yet, very little is known about how they are incorporated into practice, and what it means to use and rely upon them. This paper focuses on the rapid diagnostic test for malaria (mRDT), examining its introduction into low-level public health facilities in Tanzania within an intervention to improve the targeting of costly malaria medication. We interviewed 26 health workers to explore how a participatory training programme, mobile phone messages, posters and leaflets shaped the use and interpretation of the test. Drawing on notions of biopolitics, this paper examines how technologies of the self and mechanisms of surveillance bolstered the role mRDT in clinical decision-making. It shows how the significance of the test interacted with local knowledge, the availability of other medication, and local understandings of good clinical practice. Our findings suggest that in a context in which care is reduced to the provision of medicines, strict adherence to mRDT results may be underpinned by increasing the use of other pharmaceuticals or may leave health workers with patients for whom they are unable to provide care.