In and around life: biopolitics in the tropics

Abstract

This article is a reflection on the concepts of biopower and biopolitics. Mapping some of the main approaches to this topic, the paper highlights a tension between policies that seek to encourage and potentialize life and individuals excluded and left to die. The article involves two main concerns: one that questions the existence of biopolitical frameworks that end up producing bodies and subjectivities as mere fruits of the exercise of power and control, and, thus, are circumscribed by them; and another that questions how to read this scenario in the tropics. While contemplating these concerns, the text then reflects on the possible limits and potentialities of this conceptual framework.

Contemporary Perspectives on Ethnically Targeted Internments: A Study on the Chinese Indian and the Japanese Canadian Wartime Experiences

“…Once confined within those camp spaces, they were nothing more than a bunch of subjugated human bodies, characterized by complete docility and passiveness. These bodies and subjectivities are nothing but fruits of the exercise of the biopower of the Sate upon its targeted population (Pereira, 2013). A recent analysis of the biopolitical structure of power highlights the inconsistencies for human rights (Castellani, 2017); this study takes this observation forward and establishes that the camps reduce individuals to mere life by subjugating them and (then) depriving them of all kinds of human rights and liberties.…”