Foucault News

Security, Life and Death: Governmentality and Biopower in the Post-9/11 Era

CALL FOR PAPERS: For an edited collection of scholarly papers on the above topic to be published with de Sitter Publications.

Editor: Claudio Colaguori, PhD. York University

Theorizations of power through a Foucaultian conceptual paradigm continue to predominate analyses of the present geo-political order. With the fall of the Berlin wall the 1990s quickly became known as the post-communist era of a burgeoning civil society, while critical thought at the start of 21st Century took a new turn in its captivation by the September 11th terrorist attacks on American soil. The post 9/11 era which we are still firmly in brings with it a new political ontology based on security and control. The response to the problem of “terror” and “security” has since shifted much social thought to the question of political power, the normalization of authoritarian measures, and the precarious dialectic between security and liberty – with real consequences for life and death. Predating the rise of Foucaultism, these issues have long been the subjects of focus in the earlier works of Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Nicos Poulantzas, Ralph Miliband, Murray Bookchin and numerous others. Currently the analytic paradigm developed by Michel Foucault continues to demonstrate its utility as a mode of critical analysis through a number of concepts he mobilized such as: biopower, governmentality, discipline, and security. These concepts allow us to identify forms, trends, strategies and counter-strategies of power within the constitution of social life and the reformation of social order that include and yet go beyond repressive state power. The social effects identified in Foucault’s concepts are reflected in material reality in numerous ways:

• on the bodies of subjects who are configured by and/or resist the project of domination
• through the reconfiguration of society towards increasing securitization and social control
• how biopower continues to change form, shift and adapt to influence human and other terrestrial life forms and social realities beyond the state form to include matters of human well-being from the politics of food to labour issues and other crucial elements of the life-world

We are seeking original papers that demonstrate the material manifestations of biopower and governmentality that are analytically rigorous yet grounded in real-world practices and social conditions of the post 9/11 era. The project also encourages papers that analyze the ideas and analyses of other critical thinkers in relation to Foucault’s themes.

Relevant topics to consider may include but are not limited to:

 social action and state backlash
 the criminalization of dissent
 policing terrorism and its discontents
 race, culture and social control
 pharmaceutical biopower
 ecological domination and risks to life
 new forms of reification
 inefficiencies of warfare and real collateral damage
 human rights and biopower
 real threats and risks in the post 9/11 era
 surveillance society – transportation, communication and public spies
 security and business war
 borders and airports as spaces of lawlessness/lawfulness
 the globalization of death in the post 9/11 era
 critical sociologies of law and security
 law and order society and its new authoritarianisms
 weaponization, militarization and the culture of contest
 autocracy within democracy
 fundamentalisms of thought and discourse that give rise to repressive social structures

Please send abstracts or original drafts for consideration to the editor, Claudio Colaguori, at claudio.ac@rogers.com by July 30 2011. Please put ‘security and life’ in the subject line.