Another Politics of Life is Possible

Theory, Culture and Society 26 (5):44-60 (2009)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Although it is usually assumed that in Michel Foucault’s work biopolitics is a politics which has life for its object, a closer analysis of the courses he gave at the Collège de France on this topic, as well as of the other seminars and papers of this period, shows that he took a quite different direction, restricting it to the regulation of population. The aim of this article is to return to the origins of the concept and to confront the issue of life as such. This implies four shifts with respect to Foucault’s theory: Politics is not only about the rules of the game of governing, but also about its stakes. More than the power over life, contemporary societies are characterized by the legitimacy they attach to life. Rather than a normalizing process, the intervention in lives is a production of inequalities. The politics of life, then, is not only a question of governmentality and technologies, but also of meaning and values. The discussion is grounded on a series of empirical investigations conducted in France and South Africa on how life and lives are treated in our world.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Form-of-Life: From Politics to Aesthetics (and Back).Jason E. Smith - 2013 - Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 23 (44-45).
Politics: Antiquity and its Legacy.Kostas Vlassopoulos (ed.) - 2009 - Oxford University Press.
The politics of "life itself" and new ways of dying.Rosi Braidotti - 2010 - In Diana H. Coole & Samantha Frost (eds.), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Duke University Press. pp. 201--220.
Political philosophy.Steven B. Smith - 2012 - New Haven: Yale University Press.
Gandhi on democracy, politics and the ethics of everyday life.Uday Singh Mehta - 2010 - Modern Intellectual History 7 (2):355-371.
Dilthey as a Philosopher of Life.Rudolf A. Makkreel - 2013 - In S. Campbell & P. Bruno (eds.), The Science, Politics, and Ontology of Life-Philosophy. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 1.
The Politics of Characteristics.C. Colwell - 2000 - Social Philosophy Today 16:25-34.

Analytics

Added to PP
2014-02-02

Downloads
62 (#234,541)

6 months
3 (#445,838)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?