On the Greek Origins of Biopolitics

Ojakangas, Mika

doi:10.4324/9781315620237

Cited by 24 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…The final approach we consider in our overview of the debate is developed by Mika Ojakangas who argues that biopolitics ‘is as old as Western political thought itself: the politico-philosophical categories of classical thought, particularly those of Plato and Aristotle, were already biopolitical categories’ (Ojakangas, 2016, p. 6). While this statement clearly separates Ojakangas from Foucault’s thesis on the modernity of biopolitics, he also differs from the other two authors we have considered above.…”

Section: Modern Ancient or Both: Dating Biopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ojakangas begs to differ: the ethno-racial character of Nazi biopolitics did not exclude its explicitly aristocratic orientation, which, moreover, was addressed to the community and not the individual. If, as Esposito argued, Nazism was the extreme and paroxysmal pinnacle of biopolitics, then its blueprint was already prepared by Plato (Ojakangas, 2016, pp. 18–19).…”

Section: Modern Ancient or Both: Dating Biopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When did biopolitics begin? Actuality and potentiality in historical events

Prozorov

2022

European Journal of Social Theory

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The article addresses the ongoing debate about the origins of biopolitics. While Foucault’s analysis of biopolitics approached it as a modern rationality of government, Agamben’s Homo Sacer series presented biopolitics as having a longer provenance, dating back to the antiquity. These polar positions are not mutually exclusive but coexist in these and other theories of biopolitics, which approach its object as both modern and ancient, having its chronological origin in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries yet also possessing a prehistory of precursors. The article interprets this dual origin in terms of Paolo Virno’s theory of historical temporality, which distinguishes between the chronological past of historical events and their potential past, which accompanies and is negated in them. Coexisting with its own unrealized potential, every historical event remains incomplete and extends itself both backwards and forwards, positing its precursors and prefiguring its future outcomes. While modern in the chronological sense, biopolitics is retrospectively inscribed in a longer historical lineage, its antecedents easily identifiable in the history of political thought. Finally, we apply this approach to Virno’s own account of the history of biopolitics, questioning his identification of past potential with labour-power.

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Section: Modern Ancient or Both: Dating Biopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Modern Ancient or Both: Dating Biopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When did biopolitics begin? Actuality and potentiality in historical events

Prozorov

2022

European Journal of Social Theory

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“…According to Mills, this approach has to deal with two challenges: defining the scale and the duration of the biopolitics phenomenon. For example, in his lectures on The Birth of Biopolitics (1978–1979/2008), Foucault claimed that biopolitics began in the 18th century and can be localised in a specific set of Western-liberal institutions, but scholars like Mika Ojakangas (2016, 2017) have argued that biopolitical practices extend all the way back to ancient Greece, while Kiarina A. Kordela (2013) has considered biopolitical racism that operates in global terms.…”

Section: The Aporetic Structure Of Biopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflexive Biopolitics and the Structure of Experimental Knowledge

Patkauskas¹

2021

Philosophy & Social Criticism

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Over the last 20 years, biopolitics has become an established research field within the humanities and the social sciences. However, scholars agree that the academic status of biopolitics remains problematic due to the latter’s conceptual fuzziness, unmanageable scope and weak foundations. To address these issues, biopolitics theorists have engaged in reflexive efforts to convert biopolitics into a respectable discipline with a clear definition, research agenda and canon. In this article, I examine the reflexive biopolitics scholarship that has emerged in the last decade and conclude that while biopolitics may not satisfy the criteria for achieving disciplinary respectability due to the chief aporia that both underpins and undermines the academic biopolitics project – namely, its seemingly infinite reach – the structure of biopolitics matches that of experimental knowledge, also known as counterscience, the university without condition and nomad science.

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“…94 It was exercised by the shepherd over a flock, and endowed the shepherd with the task 'to provide continuous material and spiritual welfare for each and every member of the flock'. 95 Pastoral power was thus 'a beneficent power', a 'power of care', 96 concerned with 'constantly ensur[ing], sustain[ing], and improve[ing] the lives of each and every one', 97 and with providing 'spiritual direction'. 98 Its ultimate task was the spiritual 'salvation of the flock' and of every single sheep in the flock, with the effect that pastoral power was both an individualising and massifying power.…”

Section: Luca Mavellimentioning

confidence: 99%

Governing populations through the humanitarian government of refugees: Biopolitical care and racism in the European refugee crisis

Mavelli

2017

Rev. Int. Stud.

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The notion of humanitarian government has been increasingly employed to describe the simultaneous and conflicting deployment of humanitarianism and security in the government of 'precarious lives' such as refugees. This article argues that humanitarian government should also be understood as the biopolitical government of host populations through the humanitarian government of refugees. In particular, it explores how the biopolitical governmentality of the UK decision to suspend search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean in 2014, and the British rejection and German welcoming of Syrian refugees primarily concern the biological and emotional care of the British and German populations. To this end, the article analyses how dynamics of inclusion/exclusion of refugees have been informed by a biopolitical racism that redraws the boundary between 'valuable' (to be included) and 'not valuable' (to be excluded) lives according to the refugees' capacity to enhance the biological and emotional well-being of host populations. This discussion aims to contribute to three interrelated fields of research -namely, humanitarian government, biopolitical governmentality, and responses to the European refugee crisis -by exploring how biopolitics has shaped the British and German responses to the crisis and how it encompasses more meanings and rationalities than currently recognised by existing scholarship on humanitarian government.

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On the Greek Origins of Biopolitics

Cited by 24 publications

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When did biopolitics begin? Actuality and potentiality in historical events

When did biopolitics begin? Actuality and potentiality in historical events

Reflexive Biopolitics and the Structure of Experimental Knowledge

Governing populations through the humanitarian government of refugees: Biopolitical care and racism in the European refugee crisis

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