Impossible Dialogue on Bio-power: Agamben and Foucault

Abstract

In Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben criticizes Michel Foucaultʹs distinction between "productive" bio-power and "deductive" sovereign power, emphasizing that it is not possible to distinguish between these two. In his view, the production of what he calls "bare life" is the original, although concealed, activity of sovereign power. In this article, Agambenʹs conclusions are called into question.(1) The notion of "bare life", distinguished from the "form of life", belongs exclusively to the order of sovereignty, being incompatible with the modern bio-political notion of life, that is univocal and immanent to itself. In the era of biopolitics, life is already a bios that is only its own zoe ("form-of-life"). (2) Violence is not hidden in the foundation of bio-politics; the "hidden" foundation of bio-politics is love (agape) and care (cura), "care for individual life". (3) Bio-politics is not absolutized in the Third Reich; the only thing that the Third Reich absolutizes is the sovereignty of power (Aryan race) and the nakedness of life (the Jews). (4) St Paulʹs "messianic revolution" does not endow us with the means of breaking away from the closure of bio-political rationality; on the contrary, Paulʹs "messianic revolution" is a historical precondition for the deployment of modern bio-politics. (5) Instead of homo sacer, who is permitted to kill without committing homicide, the paradigmatic figure of the bio-political society can be seen, for example, in the middle-class Swedish social-democrat.As Spinoza had said, it is a problem of love and hate and not judgment Gilles Deleuze, To Have Done with Judgment

The (bio)politicization of neuroscience in Australian early years policies: fostering brain-resourcesashuman capital

“…As the discussion above indicates, biopolitics refers to a positive and encouraging mode of government -to the government that takes place through the "care for life", to paraphrase Ojakangas (2005;see also Joronen, 2015a). In biopolitics, life -the biological capacities and skills of individuals in particular, and the conducts and properties of population in general -appears as an object of political strategies that are not negative in nature (such as punishing, disciplining, prohibiting, or about menace of death).…”

State Racism and the Paradox of Biopower

“…In "Impossible dialogue on bio-power," Ojakangas argues against Agamben's reading and suggests that "neither the modern state nor the Third Reichin which the monstrosity of the modern state is crystallized -are the syntheses of the sovereign power and bio-power, but, rather, the institutional loci of their irreconcilable tension." 105 But what does this mean? Does it mean that Foucault was mistaken when he himself referred to their absolute coextensivity?…”

Giorgio agamben and the spatialities of the camp: an introduction

“…Homo Sacer is little by little gaining the status of a 'post-modern political classic' (Ojakangas, 2005). The increased interest in Agamben reflects increased engagement in biopolitics and biopower in general; concepts that have become increasingly prominent in contemporary political thought (Sinnerbrink, 2005).…”

“…Agamben's actuality is therefore in tandem with the marked resurgence of interest in Foucault's work, not only due to the recent transcriptions and translations of Foucault's lectures (Foucault, 2003a(Foucault, , 2003b(Foucault, , 2006 but also the confluence of recent political events (war on terror, increased Islamophobia, vilification of asylum-seekers) to which a Foucaultian analysis is particularly germane (Golder, 2005). At the same time, the renewed interest in Schmitt in political theory (Kalyvas, 2000;Rasch, 2000Rasch, , 2003Koskenniemi, 2004;Stirk, 2004;Ojakangas, 2005) should be seen as an aftermath of the influential publications of not only Agamben, but also Derrida (primarily Politics of Friendship (Derrida, 1997(Derrida, , but also I would argue 2000(Derrida, , 2001(Derrida, and 2005 (Prozorov, 2005). New and old texts by Foucault, Agamben, Schmitt, Hardt andNegri (2000, 2004) and others mutually reinforce each other's importance in the social sciences and the humanities, as together they offer a deeper understanding of the present bio-and geopolitical condition.…”