Biopolitics, Biopower, and the Return of Sovereignty

Coleman, Mathew; Grove, Kevin

doi:10.1068/d3508

Cited by 119 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In its original usage, the homo sacer was a category of person who could be killed by anyone, with no punishment, but at the same time could not be honored with sacrifice. In contemporary societies, Agamben (1998) argues, the category of homo sacer is epitomized by the prisoner in the concentration camp, who is at once both within and outside of a society—nakedly vulnerable to its power, but with no right to protection, and no defense or recourse other than the physical resistance and struggle for survival that any animal in captivity would exercise (Coleman and Grove 2009). The homo sacer occupies a ‘zone of indistinction’ (Diken and Lausten 2002), not recognized by political institutions as a constituency, but rather seen as a kind of deficit or problem to be controlled, managed, or corrected, as Scheper-Hughes (1997) has argued of ‘people who get rubbished.’…”

Section: The War On Drugs and The State Of Exceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A hell of a life: addiction and marginality in post-industrial Detroit

Draus¹,

Roddy²,

Greenwald³

2010

Social & Cultural Geography

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Drawing on concepts from Foucault and Agamben, we maintain that the lives of daily heroin users provide a prime illustration of bare life in the zone of indistinction that is contemporary Detroit. First, we consider the case of Detroit as a stigmatized and racially segregated city, with concrete consequences for its residents. We then present evidence from in-depth ethnographic and economic interviews to illustrate the various spaces of confinement—that of addiction, that of economic marginality, and that of gender—occupied by these men and women, as well as the indeterminacy of their daily lives, captured through their descriptions of daily routines and interactions. We examine their expressions of worth as expressed in economic, emotional and moral terms. Finally, we draw connections between the sustained marginality of these individuals, as a contemporary category of homo sacer, and the policies and powers that both despise and depend upon them. Heroin, we contend, helps to fill and numb this social void, making bare life bearable, but also cementing one’s marginality into semi-permanence.

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Section: The War On Drugs and The State Of Exceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A hell of a life: addiction and marginality in post-industrial Detroit

Draus¹,

Roddy²,

Greenwald³

2010

Social & Cultural Geography

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“…Rygiel, 2010;Topak, 2014;Vaughan-Williams, 2015a). For Foucault, biopolitics is a generalised form of governing, which involves a rationality or modality of power that manages or regulates populations through a series of calculative mechanisms that render life productive (Coleman and Grove, 2009). That is, biopolitics refers to a governmental regime whereby life becomes an object of calculation, with knowledge-power therefore actively operating on life itself.…”

Section: Governing Migration Through Deathmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governing migration through death in Europe and the US: Identification, burial and the crisis of modern humanism

Squire

2016

European Journal of International Relations

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Border deaths have become an established feature of contemporary migratory politics in both Europe and the US. This article examines similarities and differences in practices of 'governing migration through death' across the US-Mexico (Sonoran) and in the EU-North African (Mediterranean) contexts. Instead of taking a conventional comparative analysis of two distinct sites, the article draws on critical scholarship in the field of border studies in order to examine biopolitical, thanatopolitical and necropolitical dynamics of bordering that cross contexts. It argues that these operations of power converge in both European and US bordering practices, specifically through a form of biophysical violence that operates directly on the biological functions of migrating bodies. The article suggests that the establishment of this violence represents a crisis of modern humanism, which becomes implicated in the toleration of such violence through processes of denial, displacement, rejection and compensation. By focusing in particular on the ways that the treatment of the dead functions as a means of compensating for (yet not redressing) biophysical violence, the article highlights the deficiencies of contemporary practices of identification and burial, and raises questions about the limitations of contestations that emphasise dignity only to perpetuate a hierarchy of 'worthy' and 'unworthy' lives. In so doing, the article concludes by suggesting that contemporary 'migration crises' are better understood in terms of the crisis of modern humanism, grounded in Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian traditions, which can no longer deny its implication in practices of governing migration through death.

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“…In particular, it tends to make "bare life" into a transhistorical condition that is universally present (Coleman & Grove, 2009). Put differently, "bare life" helps understand how vulnerability works as the focal point of an apparatus of security without considering the historical conditions that guide that shift, much less the processes that make some populations more vulnerable than others.…”

Section: Indeterminate Interventions: Security and Humanitarianismmentioning

confidence: 98%

War without end? Military humanitarianism and the limits of biopolitical approaches to security in Central America and the Caribbean

Bryan

2015

Political Geography

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Biopolitics, Biopower, and the Return of Sovereignty

Cited by 119 publications

References 19 publications

A hell of a life: addiction and marginality in post-industrial Detroit

A hell of a life: addiction and marginality in post-industrial Detroit

Governing migration through death in Europe and the US: Identification, burial and the crisis of modern humanism

War without end? Military humanitarianism and the limits of biopolitical approaches to security in Central America and the Caribbean

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