The chapter by Adorno discusses the implications of the parallel formation of economics and biology in the eighteenth century that account for the continuous transference of medical metaphors to the economy and of economical considerations into medical well-being that is characteristic of the neoliberal normative order. Adorno takes up Foucault’s formula according to which biopower is a power which has “the right to make live” in opposition to the sovereign right to “put to death.” Adorno advances the paradoxical hypothesis that, if thanatopolitics is the product of the power to “make live,” then perhaps an affirmative biopolitics ought to be found on the side of a practice of “learning how to die” which, since Socrates through Montaigne to Heidegger, has characterized the philosophical form of life.
Résumé La sécurité et la protection à laquelle nous sommes censés aspirer sont en réalité celles que prodigue le berger à son troupeau : elles multiplient les instruments de domination. Comment se soustraire à ce pouvoir pastoral si avide de maximiser nos forces vitales (pour mieux les exploiter) ? En revenant à une vieille maxime : « Qui a appris à mourir, il a désappris à servir ». En contrepied du biopouvoir et d’une certaine conception du care s’esquisse la résistance d’un être qui doit et veut compter avec sa propre disparition. Abstract The security and protection to which we aspire are those provided by the shepherd to his herd: they multiply the instruments of our domination. How can we extract ourselves from this pastoral power so eager to maximize our vital forces (better to exploit them)? By reclaiming the old maxim: “He who learns to die, unlearns to serve”. Against biopower and a certain conception of care, this delineates a form of resistance for individuals who must (and want to) count with their own disappearance.
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