Biopolitics

Toward a Critical Phenomenology of “Illegality”: State Power, Criminalization, and Abjectivity Among Undocumented Migrant Workers In Tel Aviv, Israel

by Sarah Willen

Willen, Sarah S. 2007. “Toward a Critical Phenomenology of ‘Illegality’: State Power, Criminalization, and Abjectivity among Undocumented Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, Israel.” Special issue: "Exploring ‘Illegal’ and ‘Irregular’ Migrants’ Lived Experiences of Law and State Power.” S. Willen, Guest editor. International Migration 45(3): 8-38.

Given the vast scope and magnitude of the phenomenon of so-called “illegal” migration in the present historical... more Given the vast scope and magnitude of the phenomenon of so-called “illegal” migration in the present historical moment, this article contends that phenomenologically engaged ethnography has a crucial role to play in sensitizing not only anthropologists, but also policymakers, politicians, and broader publics to the complicated, often anxiety-ridden and frightening realities associated with “the condition of migrant illegality,” both in specific host society settings and comparatively across the globe. In theoretical terms, the article constitutes a preliminary attempt to link pressing questions in the fields of legal anthropology and anthropology of transnational migration, on one hand, with recent work by phenomenologically oriented scholars interested in the anthropology of experience, on the other. The article calls upon ethnographers of undocumented transnational migration to bridge these areas of scholarship by applying what can helpfully be characterized as a “critical phenomenological” approach to the study of migrant “illegality” (Willen, 2006; see also Desjarlais, 2003). This critical phenomenological approach involves a three-dimensional model of illegality: first, as a form of juridical status; second, as a sociopolitical condition; and third, as a mode of being-in-the-world. In developing this model, the article draws upon 26 non-consecutive months of ethnographic field research conducted within the communities of undocumented West African (Nigerian and Ghanaian) and Filipino migrants in Tel Aviv, Israel, between 2000 and 2004. During the first part of this period, “illegal” migrants in Israel were generally treated as benign, excluded “Others.” Beginning in mid-2002, however, a resource-intensive, government-sponsored campaign of mass arrest and deportation reconfigured the condition of migrant “illegality” in Israel and, in effect, transformed these benign “Others” into wanted criminals. By analyzing this transformation the article highlights the profound significance of examining not only the judicial and sociopolitical dimensions of what it means to be “illegal” but also its impact on migrants' modes of being-in-the-world.

Introduction to the Special Issue "Exploring 'Illegal' and 'Irregular' Migrants' Lived Experiences of Law and State Power"

by Sarah Willen

Willen, Sarah S. 2007. “Introduction” to the Special Issue: "Exploring ‘Illegal’ and ‘Irregular’ Migrants’ Lived Experiences of Law and State Power.” S. Willen, Guest editor. International Migration. 45(3): 2-7.

L'Hyperpolitique Du «Plus Jamais ça!»: Demandeurs D'Asile Soudanais, Turbulence Gouvernementale Et Politiques De Contrôle Des Réfugiés En Israël

by Sarah Willen

Willen, Sarah S. 2008. “L’hyperpolitique du 'Plus jamais ça!': demandeurs d'asile soudanais, turbulence gouvernementale et politiques de contrôle des réfugiés en Israël.” Cultures et Conflits: Sociologie Politique de l'International 71(3): 93-112.

Comunità, immunità, apertura verso l’alterità: una biopolitica affermativa e oltre-umana?

by Giacomo Pezzano

Published in "Trópos. Rivista di ermeneutica e critica filosofica”, IV, 2, 2011, pp. 167-184

Roberto Esposito claims that biopolitics characterizes the entire modernity, and that it is built on the immunity... more Roberto Esposito claims that biopolitics characterizes the entire modernity, and that it is built on the immunity dispositive. Im-munity is the negation of the munus which animates and builds com-munity: inside the immunitarian paradigm, thinking politics and ontology is considering men as ab-solutes beings, without any kind of engagement to each other, inhabited by a vacuum to deny. Esposito believes this means shaping an anthropological paradigm (systematized by philosophical anthropology in the 20th century) in which man is thought to be distinct from the animal since he is capable of denying his own nature and, more generally, his relationship with the world and the other beings – that is, a paradigm in which community has no ‘positive’ place. In order to overcome the immunitarian paradigm, we need to define the outlines of an affirmative biopolitics, a politics ‘of ’ life and not ‘on’ life. This biopolitical shift requires the understanding of the ‘flow of life,’ of its everlasting and unprotected openness: Esposito claims that life is impersonal and intrinsically normative, over-human and perpetually exposed to the ‘outside.’ Finally, this perspective leaves open a crucial question: can over-man exist without man?

Configuring maternal, preborn and infant embodiment

by Deborah Lupton

An increasing literature on the biopolitics of contemporary maternity and on risk society, individualisation and... more An increasing literature on the biopolitics of contemporary maternity and on risk society, individualisation and parenting has demonstrated the increasing emphasis that has been placed upon pregnant women and mothers to take responsibility for the health and welfare of their children. The ideal female ‘reproductive citizen’ is expected to place her children’s health and wellbeing above her own needs and desires. Here the subject positions of the ‘good mother’ and the ‘responsible citizen’ as they are produced through the discourses and practices of neoliberalism intertwine. This paper looks at the convergence of various influential discourses, images, practices and technologies in configuring maternal, preborn and infant bodies in certain ways in the context of neoliberalism. These include such factors as the growing importance of the concept of risk in relation to preborn and infant wellbeing, the extension of infant identity back into preborn bodies, the emergence of the concepts of the foetal and embryonic (and even the preconceived embryonic) citizen, the precious child and intensive parenting and the symbolic concepts of permeability, purity and danger and Self and Other as they relate to maternal, infant and preborn embodiment.

Le" nuevas poblaciones" della Sierra Morena come esperimento biopolitico

by Francisco Vazquez Garcia

Biopolítica borbónica en Chile: el discurso antropológico sobre la ociosidad y el vagabundaje

by Patricio Lepe-Carrión

En editorial para ser publicado en el libro colectivo "Revisando el presente. Ensayos críticos desde el sur". CEAPEDI. Universidad Nacional del Comahue - Argentina.

"Where are the Missing Masses? The Quasi-publics and Non-publics of Technoscience"

by shiju sam varughese

Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy, Vol. 50, No. 2, 2012 (Special Issue: Young Scholars Take a Forward Look), DOI 10.1007/s11024-012-9197-3

The paper offers a political-philosophical analysis of the state and publics in the age of technoscience to propose... more The paper offers a political-philosophical analysis of the state and publics in the age of technoscience to propose three distinct categories of publics: scientific-citizen publics constituted by civil society, quasi-publics that initiate another kind of engagement through the activation of ‘political society,’ and non-publics cast outside these spheres of engagement, based on the empirical contexts of public engagement with technoscience in non-western contexts like India.

2011 “Empire, Global Capitalism, and Theory: Reconsidering Hardt and Negri,” Current Perspectives in Social Theory. Vol. 29. P. 187-207.

by Jeb Sprague

It has been over a decade since the publication of Michael Hardt and Antoni Negri’s widely read Empire, a book that... more It has been over a decade since the publication of Michael Hardt and Antoni Negri’s widely read Empire, a book that claimed humanity had entered a qualitatively new era in the organization of power. How do critical sociological studies that also theorize global capitalism depart from or share affinities with Hardt and Negri’s Foucauldian-inspired notion of empire? The two most important shared insights is the notion of a new epoch in the history of world capitalism and the conceptualization of a global system that moves beyond the idea of U.S. imperialism solely as behind its fundamental structure. However, overpowering Hardt and Negri’s framework are some fundamental problems: the vague and nondialectical idea of multitude, the lack of the role of the state, their confusing and contradictory idea of constitutionalism, and a misapprehension of immaterial labor.

The Value of Immigrant Life

by Jonathan Xavier Inda

(2012) “Im/Mobilities in a ‘Hostile Territory’: Managing the Red Line.’” Geopolitics

by Lisa Bhungalia

Governing through the family: Struggles over US Noncitizen Family Detention Policy

by Lauren Martin

This paper offers a conceptual framework in which ‘the family’ is situated as an object of governmental intervention,... more This paper offers a conceptual framework in which ‘the family’ is situated as an object of governmental intervention, on the one hand, and a site of discursive proliferation, on the other hand. Reading across the works of Michel Foucault and Jacques Donzelot, I argue that the family served an important, but often overlooked, role in Foucauldian conceptualizations of sovereign, disciplinary, and biopolitical modalities of power. In particular, the elaboration of disciplinary institutions and biopolitical governance converged in the family household; as a central point in these governmental strategies, the family’s relationship to sexuality, child-rearing, and kinship provoked anxieties over race, nation building, sexuality, and gender. After reviewing how these concerns overlapped in US immigration policies, I analyze the debates concerning noncitizen family detention policy in the United States. I show how a series of proposals for family detention and release congealed around competing discourses of childhood innocence and criminality, prison and home, and parental authority and security. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that state and nonstate actors produce multiple normative family subjects through strategic spatializations of state and familial power.

Uberrima Fides, Foucault and the Security of Uncertainty

by Luis Lobo-Guerrero

Uberrima Fides is a legal doctrine that governs insurance contracts and expects all parties to the insurance agreement... more Uberrima Fides is a legal doctrine that governs insurance contracts and expects all parties to the insurance agreement to act in good faith by declaring all material facts relative to a policy. The doctrine originated in England in 1766 with the case Carter v Boehm ruled by Lord Mansfield. Ever since, it has become, with some differences in interpretation, a cornerstone of insurance relationships around the world. The role that trust plays within it, however, is not simple and should not be taken for granted. While it is expected that an idea of trust represents an order of truth, trust in itself is the outcome of a complex negotiation of moral orders. Semiotically, trust operates here not as a Kantian category for the understanding but as a signifier of an order of truth that upholds the possibility for insurance relationships. Trust, as sign, operates as a condition of possibility for the performance of insurance. In this article, a Foucaultian approach is employed to problematise the idea of trust and its role in insurance relationships. The case of mis-selling of insurance policies in the United Kingdom since the 1980s, which has given rise to numerous legal rulings, is used as the empirical site for the problematisation.

The Biosocial Event: Responding to Innovation in the Life Sciences

by Nick Lee

A much improved version is available in Sociology

Rapid innovation in the life sciences calls for reflection on sociological practice in a changing research context. To... more Rapid innovation in the life sciences calls for reflection on sociological practice in a changing research context. To this end we introduce the concept of the ‘bio-social event’. It is commonly observed that some sets of life processes and social processes are more mutually relevant than others. We show that relevance and negotiability can also change within these relationships. Such changes, or ‘bio-social events’, lie at the heart of much bio-social novelty and innovation. We illustrate and explore the concept through two examples; meningitis infection and epidemic, and the use of sonic ‘teen deterrents’ in urban space. We set the concept in the context of sociological debate over bio-social dualism. We argue that the concept can assist in developing new forms of sociological practice focussed on critical but productive engagement with innovation in the life sciences.

Navigating the Bio-politics of Childhood: How Far can Hybridity Take Us?

by Nick Lee

A much improved version is available in Childhood: a Global Journal of Child Research

Co-authored with Dr. Johanna Motzkau

The study of childhood is currently weakened by a biological/social dualism, separating ‘social’ from ‘developmental’... more The study of childhood is currently weakened by a biological/social dualism, separating ‘social’ from ‘developmental’ traditions and falsely identifying the investigation of life processes with the naturalisation of childhood. Researching the emerging space of childhood bio-politics, in which life processes are central to social and political processes, requires that these problems be managed. The view of childhood as a ‘hybrid’ phenomenon allows for the management of dualism but has difficulty navigating bio-political space. A supplementary approach based on multiplicities of ‘life’, ‘voice’ and ‘resource’ is described. The argument is illustrated by discussion of sonic ‘teen deterrents’ in the UK. .

"The relationship between Biopolitics, Sovereignty and Ethics in Foucault's work"

by Philippe Fournier

Conference paper, ISA 2008

From the 1980's to the present times, Michel Foucault's work has been increasingly influential in International... more From the 1980's to the present times, Michel Foucault's work has been increasingly influential in International Relations. While some scholars have followed his conceptualization of exclusionary forms of power and applied it to the modalities of identity formation in a sovereign states' system, others have recently applied his work on rationalities of government to the development of extra national biopolitical regimes. However, a closer reading of Foucault reveals a number of ambiguities concerning the ways in which he understood and combined different forms of power. This paper argues for a more critical and comprehensive reading of Foucault in IR theory and, more specifically, for the need to uncover the various intersections between sovereign (especially in light of recent executive orders) and biopolitical/disciplinarian forms of power

The problem of slums: shifting methods of neoliberal urban government in Morocco

by Koen Bogaert

published in Development and Change (2011), 42(3), 709-731.

This article puts forward two main arguments. First, it highlights the relation between different phases of... more This article puts forward two main arguments. First, it highlights the relation between different phases of neoliberalism in Morocco together with the specific methods and techniques of urban government that were deployed in efforts to govern the slums and their populations. A period of roll back neoliberalism during the 1980s generated reforms that tried to increase government control over the urban territory to compensate for the negative social outcomes of structural adjustment. The subsequent period of roll out neoliberalism coincided with the attempt to manage and regulate the slum population as such, through new modalities of state intervention. Secondly, while evolutions in neoliberal government reflected a gradual process, this transition in Morocco was accelerated by security concerns following two severe moments of urban violence: the 1981 riots and the 2003 suicide bombings in Casablanca. Therefore, Morocco’s recent political transformations cannot be understood in terms provided by the mainstream narrative linking economic liberalization to democratization. Rather, it reflects a profound shift towards intrinsically authoritarian modalities of neoliberal government which are clearly revealed at the urban scale.

Plasticization as Necrophilia: Death, Decomposition, and the Inorganic in Foucault

by Kelsey Borrowman

Presented various of the paper at the New York Society for Women in Philosophy, Radical Foucault Conference in East London, and the Foucault Circle Conference (2012). Upcoming presentation for the Foucault Society in New York City on April 12.

Throughout his work, Foucault wrestles with the notion of biopolitics, which can be defined broadly as the politics of... more Throughout his work, Foucault wrestles with the notion of biopolitics, which can be defined broadly as the politics of and over life. This essay investigates the politics of death within life, specifically concerning the concept of plasticization, in order to illuminate contemporary society’s desire for an inorganic ‘body.’ I root the discussion within The Birth of the Clinic and Foucault’s analysis of how a new concept of ‘death’ developed. Just as we understand life as permeable by death, I propose that decomposition is the life leftover in the dead body. The processes of the body dying and decomposing are really remnants of the living body, death permeated by life. By understanding decomposition this way, I articulate a distinction between the inorganic and the organic. Life is to the organic, mobile, and fluid as death is to the inorganic, static, and frozen. Then, I develop and expand the concept of plasticization as presented by Susan Bordo. I propose an understanding of plasticity as an obsession with the inorganic—with that which does not decompose (as this is a quality of life, not death). What I want to suggest is that plasticization is an obsession with the inorganic, the static, and, therefore, the dead. This understanding of the inorganic, this obsession with the non-decomposing, un-aging body is, by definition, necrophilia.

In the last section, the paper will address the implications of ‘plasticization as necrophilia’ for biopolitics and ask: should we view plasticization as part of a technology of governing bodies? I address these questions by returning to Foucault’s own work, specifically the last lecture in his lecture series Society Must Be Defended. First, I examine the sovereign’s ‘right’ to life and death and how, in the making invisible of the death, it became understood as a remaining region of freedom. Then, I analyze the way that plasticization entails both new techniques of power and makes already established techniques more prominent and invasive. From this point, I revisit Bordo in order to illustrate that this new understanding of plasticization illuminates that death as freedom is merely an illusion. In a very big way, Bordo illustrates amply that plasticity is the new norm, and the inability to be satisfied with ourselves and to desire change is seen as “due to our female nature, not to be taken seriously or made into a political question.”  In this paper, I therefore aim to illustrate exactly how plasticization is political by illuminating how our obsession with the ‘dead’ body has given the sovereign a new ‘right’ over life.

The Biopolitical Imaginary of Species Being

by Luis Lobo-Guerrero

Dillon, Michael and Luis Lobo-Guerrero (2009) 'The Biopolitical Imaginary of Species Being', Theory, Culture and Society, 26:1, 1-23

This essay revises Foucault’s account of biopolitics in the light of the impact of the molecular and digital... more This essay revises Foucault’s account of biopolitics in the light of the impact of the molecular and digital revolutions on ‘the politics of life itself’. The confluence of the molecular and digital revolutions informationalises life, providing an account of what it is to be a living thing in terms of complex adaptive and continuously emergent, informationally constituted, systems. Also re-visiting Foucault’s The Order of Things, and its interrogation of the modern analytics of finitude, the paper argues that our contemporary politics of life is therefore distinguished by the quasi-transcendentals that now distinguish informationalised life – Circulation, Connectivity and Complexity. Here, too, the paper argues, the figure of Man, which once united the quasi-transcendentals of Life, Labour and Language, is replaced by the Contingency that now unites Circulation, Connectivity and Complexity. Observing that a life of continuous emergence is also one in which production is continuously allied with destruction; such a life is lived as the continuous emergency of its own emergence. This account of contemporary biopolitics, together with its emergency of emergence, contrasts, in particular, with that offered by Agamben in his appropriation of Schmitt.

The Biopolitical Imaginary of Species Being

by Luis Lobo-Guerrero

Dillon, Michael and Luis Lobo-Guerrero (2009) 'The Biopolitical Imaginary of Species Being', Theory, Culture and Society, 26:1, 1-23

This essay revises Foucault’s account of biopolitics in the light of the impact of the molecular and digital... more This essay revises Foucault’s account of biopolitics in the light of the impact of the molecular and digital revolutions on ‘the politics of life itself’. The confluence of the molecular and digital revolutions informationalises life, providing an account of what it is to be a living thing in terms of complex adaptive and continuously emergent, informationally constituted, systems. Also re-visiting Foucault’s The Order of Things, and its interrogation of the modern analytics of finitude, the paper argues that our contemporary politics of life is therefore distinguished by the quasi-transcendentals that now distinguish informationalised life – Circulation, Connectivity and Complexity. Here, too, the paper argues, the figure of Man, which once united the quasi-transcendentals of Life, Labour and Language, is replaced by the Contingency that now unites Circulation, Connectivity and Complexity. Observing that a life of continuous emergence is also one in which production is continuously allied with destruction; such a life is lived as the continuous emergency of its own emergence. This account of contemporary biopolitics, together with its emergency of emergence, contrasts, in particular, with that offered by Agamben in his appropriation of Schmitt.