Johnson, J. M. (2024). The Biopolitics of Liberal War: Humanity, Temporality and Cosmology. Millennium, 53(1), 86-112. https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298241288171 Abstract What is the relationship between war and liberalism? Over the last two decades, an extensive and influential literature inspired by Michel Foucault’s conception of biopolitics has argued that the ‘war on terror’ is defined by distinctly liberal …
Sorace, C. (2025). Life First: Pandemic Biopolitics in China. Political Theory, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917251323747 Abstract China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic could be described as a lesson directly from the pages of Foucault. For nearly three years, China’s vast state apparatus and society were mobilized around the goal of protecting life until November 2023, when people …
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Encoding Plasticity: The Rise of Molecular Biopolitics and Human Capital, University of Toronto Quarterly 2025 94:2, 257-275 Abstract This article explores the fundamental concept of plasticity in living organisms and its complex relationship with capitalism and its datafication of life. Plasticity is presented as a crucial adaptive mechanism allowing organisms to respond …
Lindholm, S. (2025). Giovanni Botero’s biopolitical populationism: Rethinking the history of biopower. Philosophy & Social Criticism https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537251324164 Abstract The Italian political thinker and polymath Giovanni Botero (1544–1617) was a famous proponent of what is known today as populationism, the idea of maximizing the number of people within a political community. In this article, I claim …
Friedmann, V., & Marton, P. (2025). Operating by caesura: Medicalisation, geopolitical othering and biopolitical legitimacy in the (non-)approval of Sputnik V in the European Union Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2024.2442433 Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic made biopolitical decisions, including on vaccine approval, a subject of public discussion, challenging governmental legitimacy at the level of …
Dent, C. (2025). Road deaths as problematisation: thanatopolitics and economised thoughts. Griffith Law Review, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2025.2452029 ABSTRACT The persistence of the road toll suggests that a new perspective may be of value – either to consider new insights to reduce it, or to allow a greater acceptance of the relatively limited number of deaths. The …
Cudworth, E. Resisting Zoopolis: Bordering species relations as a response to COVID-19 (2024) Human-Animal Relationships in Times of Pandemic and Climate Crises: Multispecies Sociology for the New Normal, Edited By Josephine Browne, Zoei Sutton, Routledge, pp. 133-150. DOI: 10.4324/9781003257912-12 Abstract Human publics are now more aware than ever of the presence and threat of zoonotic …
Swiffen, A. From European Roots to Settler Soil: Adapting Foucault’s Biopolitics to Canadian Settler Colonialism (2024) Social and Legal Studies DOI: 10.1177/09646639241288075 Abstract This article examines the applicability of Michel Foucault’s biopolitical theory within the Canadian settler colonial context. Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, which describes the shift from sovereign power to the regulation of life …
Eberl, J.T., Bishop, J.P. Battlestar Galactica as Philosophy: Breaking the Biopolitical Cycle (2024) The Palgrave Handbook of Popular Culture as Philosophy Editors: David Kyle Johnson (Editor-in-Chief), Dean A. Kowalski, Chris Lay, Kimberly S. Engels, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 93-112. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-24685-2_4 Abstract The reimagined Battlestar Galactica series (2003–2009) and its prequel series Caprica (2009–2010) provoked viewers …
Eli B. Lichtenstein, “Biopolitics, Carcerality, and Capital in Foucault’s Unfinished Account of the Racial State,” Critical Philosophy of Race (2025) 13, no. 1, 75-94, DOI: doi.org/10.5325/critphilrace.13.1.0075. Abstract: Michel Foucault argued that a key modality of state racism is biopower, through which the life of populations is differentially supported, shaped, and neglected. However, Foucault’s account of …
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