Biopolitics

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Panagiotis Sotiris:

"The notion of biopolitics, as it was formulated by Michel Foucault, has been a very important contribution to our understanding of the changes associated with the passage to capitalist modernity, especially in regards to the ways that power and coercion are exercised. From power as a right of life and death that the sovereign holds, we pass to power as an attempt to guarantee the health (and productivity) of populations.2 This led to an expansion without precedent of all forms of state intervention and coercion. From compulsory vaccinations to bans on smoking in public spaces, the notion of biopolitics has been used in many instances as the key to understanding the political and ideological dimensions of health policies.

At the same time, it has allowed us to analyse various phenomena that are often repressed in the public sphere, from the ways that racism attempted to find a ‘scientific’ grounding to the dangers of trends such as eugenics. And indeed Agamben has used it in a constructive way, in his attempt to theorise the modern forms of a ‘state of exception’, namely spaces where extreme forms of coercion are put in practice, with the concentration camp the main example." (https://www.viewpointmag.com/2020/03/20/against-agamben-democratic-biopolitics/)

More information

* Article: Against Agamben: Is a Democratic Biopolitics Possible? By Panagiotis Sotiris March 20, 2020

URL = https://www.viewpointmag.com/2020/03/20/against-agamben-democratic-biopolitics/