Marco Piasentier and Sara Raimondi, Debating Biopolitics. New Perspectives on the Government of Life. Edward Elgar, 2022
Emerging out of the theoretical and practical urge to reflect on key contemporary debates arising in biopolitical scholarship, this timely book launches an in-depth investigation into the concept and history of biopolitics. In light of tumultuous political dynamics across the globe and new developments in this continually evolving field, the book reconsiders and expands upon Michel Foucault’s input to biopolitical studies.
Featuring rigorously structured investigations into the genealogies, dimensions, and practices of biopolitics, this incisive book introduces novel voices and perspectives into the biopolitical corpus. Contributions from eminent scholars investigate core topics of governing populations, community, and sovereignty, as well as exploring areas that remain undertheorized in the field of biopolitics, including the political accounts of non-human entities, developments in sexual health policy, and the biopolitics of time. Broad in scope, the book draws from the foundations of the biopolitical canon to forge new horizons and create opportunities for novel theoretical and empirical analysis.
Debating Biopolitics will be an invaluable tool for scholars and postgraduate students of political science and political philosophy. Its empirically driven research will also benefit practitioners and policymakers interested in the biopolitical dimension of decision-making and policy analysis.
Contents
Foreword viii
Mika Ojakangas and Sergei Prozorov
Introduction 1
Marco Piasentier and Sara Raimondi
PART I GENEALOGIES
1 Subjectivity in Foucault and Agamben: the enigma of
sovereignty and biopolitics 12
Sara Dragišić
2 Fear, the sovereign, and authority: Roberto Esposito and
the escape from the Hobbesian State 30
Vappu Helmisaari
3 Governing according to nature: Jean Bodin on climates,
humours, and temperaments 49
Samuel Lindholm
PART II DIMENSIONS
4 Glenn Gould’s mastery of not-playing: style and manner in
the work of Giorgio Agamben 68
Katarina Sjöblom
5 Biopolitics of time in Foucault and Agamben 86
Jürgen Portschy
6 Identities on the border 109
Ott Puumeister
PART III PRACTICES
7 Governing by prevention: neoliberal management of
sexual health in France 129
Théo Sabadel
8 Biopolitics of authoritarianism. The case of Russia 151
Anastasya Manuilova
9 Biopolitics, New Materialism and Latin-American
constitutionalism: A linguistic encounter? 171
Gonzalo Bustamante-Kuschel
10 The two faces of biopolitical theory: genealogies and
current approaches 193
Marco Piasentier and Sara Raimondi
Foucault News 