Michel Foucault’s modes of power have dominated both our understanding of power and norm. It is pretty impossible to think of the organisation of life outside his thinking. Here I argue that the idea and practice of mutual aid, articulated by Peter Kropotkin in his 1902 book Mutual Aid stirs us towards a different understanding of the management of life, bereft of hierarchies and bestowed with co-operation and care. Moreover, as I argue, the existence of mutual aid groups and practices (...) challenges the very idea of the norm. This has become even more apparent during the Covid19 pandemic with the surfacing of mutual aid groups globally. It is therefore rather misleading to understand our present as generator of the ‘new normal’; such claims are mere rhetorical devices aiming at keeping us in our place. (shrink)

Biochemists investigating the problem of the vitamins in the early years of the twentieth century were working without an object, as such. Although they had developed a fairly elaborate idea of the character of the ‘vitamine’ and its role in metabolism, vitamins were not yet biochemical objects, but rather ‘functional ascriptions’ and ‘explanatory devices’. I suggest that an early instance of the changing status of the object of the ‘vitamins’ can be found in their stabilization, through the course of World (...) War I, as bio-political objects for the British and Allied war effort. Vitamins emerged as players, active agents, in Britain’s wartime bio-political problems of food distribution and population health and because of this they became increasingly real as bio-political objects, even prior to their isolation as bio-chemical molecules. I suggest that the materiality of our biology has agency in the development of political regimes and schemes. (shrink)

Rumors were afoot at the Sixth Comintern Congress that there were political differences between Bukharin and Stalin. Except for Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai's comments on the Comintern Theses, other Chinese delegates seem to have expressed no public disagreement with Bukharin. The following speech, made by one "Tschang-Bio" (Chang Kuo-t'ao?) at the fourteenth session, may serve to illustrate this tactful attitude.

This book is about the use of legal scholarship by judges. It discusses the possibility that legal scholarship may function as a genuine source of law in modern municipal legal systems. The book advances a number of claims, some conceptual, some empirical, some normative. The major conceptual claims are found in Chapters 2 and 3, where a general account of the notion of a source of law is provided. Roughly, sources of law are documents or practices (e.g. statutes, judicial decisions, (...) official customs) from which norms can be derived that function as sources of content-independent reasons for judges to decide legal cases one way or another. The relevant notion of content-independence is derived (with qualifications) from H.L.A. Hart's jurisprudence. Indeed, the book's analysis of the concept of a source of law relies at various points on Hartian insights about law and legal reasoning. Chapter 4 argues that legal scholarship - or, more precisely, a particular type of legal scholarship that might be described as standard or doctrinal - can be, and indeed is, used as a source of law in modern legal systems. The conclusion that legal scholarship is used as a source of law (and thus as a source of content-independent reasons for action) may come as a surprise to those who associate judicial recourse to legal scholarship with judicial activism. This association is discussed and criticized in Chapters 5 and 6. It is argued that, in spite of a relatively common opinion to the contrary, legal scholarship can be used to mitigate discretion. In fact, it is precisely because it can be used in this way that judges sometimes refer to scholarship deceptively and suggest that it limits discretion in situations in which it really does not. The concluding chapter addresses potential objections not explicitly discussed in earlier chapters.. (shrink)

Many philosophers of music, especially within the analytic tradition, are essentialists with respect to musical experience. That is, they view their goal as that of isolating the essential set of features constitutive of the experience of music, qua music. Toward this end, they eliminate every element that would appear to be unnecessary for one to experience music as such. In doing so, they limit their analysis to the experience of a silent, motionless individual who listens with rapt attention to the (...) sounds produced by either musicians a on stage, a stereo, or a portable device. This approach is illustrated in recent work by Nick Zangwill. Drawing on essentialist assumptions, Zangwill concludes that properly musical experience is effectively disembodied and radically private. While this seems plausible when we consider the essentialists’ paradigm case, Zangwill’s conclusion seems odd once we consider the wide variety of ways that people experience music. One’s body and social situation seem ineluctably enmeshed within the experience of, e.g., hot jazz played in a nightclub, where listeners bob their heads and dance to the music, cheer on the musicians, and socialize with their fellow concertgoers. The question this paper aims to answer is: should we consider this and similar experiences of music properly “musical”? I maintain that we should. Far from the world of pure music that Zangwill and others relegate properly musical experience, I conclude that our musical experiences are fully enmeshed within the somatic, affective, and interpersonal dimensions of human life. (shrink)

The concept of “Bio-Digital Architecture” is not new and it is within an area of great speculation and few well-demarcated definitions. A key factor in the definition and practice of technology is the difference between its production and use. If we assume that forms of use are also technical, this distinction is intrinsic to countries based on economies without added value and their histories focused on reverting this situation. This article proposes the revision of a paradigm shift in South America (...) that combined the sustainable “Bio Architecture” background from the developmental state with a different economic model era. Through a historical review of the sociology of symbolic production, and the development of devices and interfaces, mechanisms are proposed to recognize paradigm shifts, in a context where technological utopias are associated with the materialization of new social utopias of developing. Focused on specific cases, this research explains the culmination of the principles of “Second-order cybernetics”, in the epistemological formulation of “Autopiesis”, and the early visualization of these principles through digital media in the experience of “Protobio”. Finally, this work concludes with the description of the concrete application of these principles, not in an illustrative way, but in the design of the electronic information architecture of the operating system, continuing with the challenge of translating the logic of the immune system into an economic, political and social context completely different from its predecessors, with “Virus Detection”—VirDet—and “Oyster 2.0”. (shrink)

In this article I want to show the characteristic elements of the bio-politics in the developmentalist Francoism, from 1959 to 1975. For this, I will distinguish three fields of study – economic , health and the ideological – and I will analyze the most characteristic – disciplinaries and regulatories – bio-political devices for each of them. At the same time, the analysis of these devices will allow me to show the most distinctive elements of the governmentality of the last (...) Francoism , understanding this concept as “conduct of conducts” tried out by the Franco’s regime in this period. Finally, all of this will allow me to provide a new interpretation about the end of the Franco’s regime, indicating the effectiveness of its bio-political devices, and announce the birth of a new governmentality in Spain with the democracy arrival. (shrink)

Technology takes an unprecedented position in contemporary society. In particular, it has become part and parcel of governmental attempts to manufacture life in new ways. Such ideas concerning the governance of life organize around the same contention: that technology and life are, in fact, highly interconnectable. This is surprising because if one enters the sites of techno-scientific experimentation, those visions turn out to be much frailer and by no means “in place” yet. Rather, they afford or enforce constant interfacing work, (...) a particular mode of manufacturing life, rendering disparate, sturdy, and often surprisingly incompatible things available for one another. Here, we contend that both of those aspects, pervasive rationalities of interconnectability and practices of interfacing mark the cornerstones of what we call a new techno-bio-politics of life. In order to grasp the government of life under the technological condition, we must understand how both human and non-human entities are being rendered interconnectable and re-worked through practices of interfacing. We take neuro-technology and care robotics as two illustrative cases. Our analysis shows that the contemporary government of life is not primarily concerned with life itself in its biological re-constitution but rather with life as it is interfaced with and through technology. (shrink)

The present work means to analyze the relation between politics and life throughout Michael Foucault’s and Agamben’s critical-conceptual articulations. That way, we try to explain the following question: to what extent and under which arguments is it possible to reflect upon the politics over the biological human life taking as reference Foucault’s and Agamben’s thesis and even finding a connection between both? We hypothesize that: it is possible to acknowledge the discovery of politics over life back at the Greco-Roman world, (...) linking the bio politics to the Western political structure; while having its spectrum projected in the Age of Antiquity, bio-politics blossomed within the Modern history, since the appearance of medico-social categories and the realizations around the human life potentiality. To inspect the underlying theme of the question, our text is organized in three different moments: first, we go through Foucault’s perception of bio-politics and its connections to the human life; next, we observe how Agamben proposes his thesis and which arguments he makes use of to sustain his statements; and lastly, we present a liaison between both thesis, putting forward how they connected themselves within a research hypothesis. (shrink)

The article presents a theoretical discussion and sociological analysis about the tensions in the building of social sex/gender relationships that are at the basis of the exclusion of women within the political field. It shows contents in dispute in the production of politics, considering the weight that categories play in the relations at a global level and in the school, the attributions inside the system sex/gender, the significations in politics, and the modes in which it is subjectified, resisted and (...) confront different logics to understand life and politics, considering the conceptual distinctions between Bíos and Zoé. This discussion allows the analysis of the imaginary institution within systematic difficulties and obstacles of political and legal kind during the post dictatorship in Chile, where based on arguments about the sex/gender system, the exclusion of women from the political field is established, limiting the development of politics that valorizes cultural diversity and human rights, accentuating discrimination and social exclusion. These shape the discussion over the modes in which the political field for women is configured, recovering the possibilities of conflict as an opening of that horizon. El artículo presenta una discusión teórica y análisis sociológico acerca de las tensiones en la construcción social de las relaciones sexo/género, que fundamentan la exclusión del campo político de las mujeres. Se distinguen los contenidos en disputa en la producción de la política, considerando el peso que tienen las categorías en juego en las relaciones a nivel global y en el espacio de la escuela, las atribuciones dentro del sistema sexo/género, las significaciones de la política, y los modos en que se subjetivan, se resisten y se confrontan diferentes lógicas para entender la vida y la política, teniendo como base las distinciones conceptuales entre Bios y Zoé. Esta discusión permite analizar la institución del imaginario en el marco de las dificultades sistemáticas y obstáculos de tipo político y legal durante la post dictadura en Chile, donde sobre la base de argumentos propios del sistema sexo/género, se establece la exclusión del campo político de las mujeres, limitando el desarrollo de políticas que pongan en valor la diversidad cultural y los derechos humanos, acentuando la discriminación y la exclusión social. Estos dan forma a la discusión sobre el modo en que se configura el campo de lo político para las mujeres, recuperando las posibilidades del conflicto como apertura de este horizonte. (shrink)

"Cognitive Architecture" asks how evolving modalities--from bio-politics to "noo-politics"--can be mapped upon the city under contemporary conditions of urbanization and globalization. Noo-politics, most broadly understood as the power exerted over the life of the mind, reconfigures perception, memory and attention, and also implicates potential ways and means by which neurobiological architecture is undergoing reconfiguration. This volume, motivated by theories such as 'cognitive capitalism' and concepts such as 'neural plasticity, ' shows how architecture and urban processes and products commingle to form (...) complex systems that produce novel forms of networks that empower the imagination and constitute the cultural landscape. This volume rethinks the relations between form and forms of communication, calling for a new logic of representation; it examines the manner in which information, with its non-hierarchical and distributed format is contributing both to the sculpting of brain and production of mind. "Cognitive Architecture" brings together renowned specialists in the areas of political and aesthetic philosophy, neuroscience, socio-cultural and architecture theory, visual and spatial theorists and practitioners. (shrink)

This paper sets Scott’s original film Blade Runner (1982) and Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) in a ‘disjunctive synthesis’ in order to provide critical analyses of both films with respect to some complex configurations of the body along two axes: bio-politics and the spectacle. We offer a reading of these configurations by focusing on the relationships between the human (organic), the non-human (android) and the immaterial (holographic); the eye (optics), the hand (haptics), and aesthetics; slavery, instrumental labour and free-play; the (...) politics of bodies and of memories; the potentialities of revolution and the transmission of ‘tradition of the oppressed’. In this, we foreground two seemingly marginal characters – J. F. Sebastian and Ana Stelline. These ‘little people’ embody and inhabit the convolutions of Blade Runner’s ‘more human than human’ world through ‘free use’ of the body and playfulness which, superficially innocent, nevertheless bear within them the promise of radical political change. (shrink)

This volume rethinks the relations between form and forms of communication, calling for a new logic of representation; it examines the manner in which ...

This paper examines the proposition that movement offers new insight into the relationship between human and non-human animals, a relationship that is important to understanding contemporar...

This introduction situates key themesfound in papers given at a recent workshop on thechanging material practices, meanings, and regulationof US organic food production. The context is theemergence of an international bio-politics ofagriculture and food and, more particularly in the US,the contradictions of sustainable agriculturemovements catalyzed by the rapid scaling up of organicagriculture from a niche activity to nascentindustry.

Even a superficial look at the classical ideas and practices of government of populations makes it immediately apparent that there is a peculiarity in Foucault’s genealogy of western bio-politics and governmentality. According to Foucault, western governmental rationality can be traced back to the Judeo-Christian tradition in general and to the Christian ideology and practice of the pastorate in particular. In this article, my purpose is to show that Christianity was not the prelude to what Foucault calls governmentality but rather marked (...) a rupture in the development that started in classical Greece and Rome and continued in early modern Europe. With the rise of Christianity, the majority of these classical practices, including negative eugenics and even family policies, either faded into the background or they were rejected outright. (shrink)

Bioethical and bio‐political questions are increasingly tackled by committees, councils, and other advisory boards that work on different and often interrelated levels. Research ethics committees work on an institutional or clinical level; local advisory boards deal with biomedical topics on the level of particular political regions; national and international political advisory boards try to answer questions about morally problematic political decisions in medical research and practice. In accordance with the increasing number and importance of committees, the (...) quality of their work and their functional status are being subjected to more and more scrutiny. Besides overall criticism regarding the quality of their work, particular committees giving political advice are often suspected of being incompatible with democratic values, such as respect for affected parties, representation of diverse values and transparency in the decision‐making processes. Based on the example of the German National Ethics Council, whose inauguration caused a still ongoing debate on the aims and scopes of committees in general, this paper discusses: (1) the requirements of modern democratic societies in dealing with complex scientific‐technical problems; (2) the composition and organisation of committees working as political advisory boards; and (3) the appointment procedures and roles of laymen and experts, and here in particular of ethicists, who may legitimately be taken on by a committee. I will argue that bioethics committees do not necessarily endanger democratic values, but can considerably improve their realisation in democratic decision‐making procedures – if, and only if, they do not act as substitutes for parliamentarian processes, but help prepare parliamentarian processes to be organised as rationally as possible. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's concept of bio-politics entails the management and regulation of life processes within the population as a whole. This administration of the biological was perhaps most manifest in the German state under National Socialism. Indeed, Foucault remarks that there was no other state of the period in which "the biological was so tightly, so insistently regulated." However while the Nazi regime evinced this bio-political concern with the management of life, it also released an unprecedented murderous potential. It is (...) this paradox, that the care of life can become the administration of death, or what Foucault deemed the transition from bio-politics to thanato-politics, that I wish to investigate through an examination of the construction of the Jewish subject through Nazi medical discourse. This paper will examine how medico-political discourse facilitated the construction of medically authorized norms that constructed the Jew as both a biological and social threat to the body politic, and how this discursively produced "Other" informed the transition from bio-politics to thanato-politics within the confines of the German medical establishment. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's concept of bio-politics entails the management and regulation of life processes within the population as a whole. This administration of the biological was perhaps most manifest in the German state under National Socialism. Indeed, Foucault remarks that there was no other state of the period in which "the biological was so tightly, so insistently regulated." However while the Nazi regime evinced this bio-political concern with the management of life, it also released an unprecedented murderous potential. It is (...) this paradox, that the care of life can become the administration of death, or what Foucault deemed the transition from bio-politics to thanato-politics, that I wish to investigate through an examination of the construction of the Jewish subject through Nazi medical discourse. This paper will examine how medico-political discourse facilitated the construction of medically authorized norms that constructed the Jew as both a biological and social threat to the body politic, and how this discursively produced "Other" informed the transition from bio-politics to thanato-politics within the confines of the German medical establishment. (shrink)

Introduction: the neuroscientific turn in political science The observation that brains and political orders are interdependent is almost trivial. Obviously, political orders require brain processes in order to emerge and to remain in place, as these processes enable action and cognition. Conversely, every since Aristotle coined man as “by nature a political animal” (Aristotle, Pol.: 1252a 3; cf. Eth. Nic.: 1097b 11), this also suggests that the political engagements of this animal has likely consequences for (...) its natural development, including the development of its psychological functions. Given these mutual interdependencies, it is remarkable that only since the 1960s, the more general domain of ‘biopolitics’ has attracted attention though first particularly in the form of behavioral politics (Alford and Hibbing). Since then biopolitics has gained in interest, so much so that different subdomains can be identified. Indeed, a 2008 review of the field of biopolitics identified five ‘headings’ of it: “(1) the case for a ‘more biologically oriented political science’, (2) ‘biologically related’ public policy issues, (3) physiological measures of political attitudes and behaviour, (4) the influence of physiological factors on actual political behaviour, and (5) the manner in which our species’ evolutionary history has left homo sapiens genetically endowed with certain social and political behavioural tendencies” (Somit and Peterson 43). Striking is how the relation between biology and politics is taken here in a rather unidirectional way, emphasizing particularly the decisive power of biology upon politics. The reverse relation is not mentioned specifically, reflecting the field of biopolitics, perhaps until quite recently. This absence of studies of political influences on our biology may have to do with the difficulty in investigating such influences. Empirical studies in biopolitics have two foci, broadly speaking: genetics and the brain, both of which have turned out to be complex and dynamic phenomena (Alford and Hibbing). Yet the studies of genetics and brain processes have made much progress in the last few decades, thanks to the development of research instruments - like fMRI brain scanners and TMS brain stimulation instruments - and of computational tools for data analysis and the simulation of explanatory models. For the field of biopolitics it is particularly relevant that within cognitive neuroscience the study of social and political issues has witnessed an increasing interest of researchers even more recently. Indeed, aware of the enabling and mediating role of the brain regarding those issues, a truly ‘neuroscientific turn’ can be observed in the social sciences, testified for example by the emergence of the field of ‘neuropolitics’ (Connolly; Vandervalk). Developing a systematic neuropolitics or biopolitics in general is a difficult challenge because of the wealth of causal influences on and interdependencies between biological, brain, cognitive and socio-political factors. Taking a somewhat more abstract perspective, this paper focuses on the process of emerging complexity in adaptive systems, enabling those to conduct ever more complex processes. Yet, parallel to that development can be observed that such systems, or organisms, are also capable in reducing the complexity of the information they are to process. Once they’re capable of developing and adjusting such compressed and complex representations of information, those systems or organisms can handle more information faster and more efficient and adaptive, yielding important benefits to the organism in navigating its environment (Halford, Wilson and Phillips). Before focusing on the role of narrative as a cognitive strategy for such a reduction of informational complexity, I will discuss the development of stable structures and increasing complexity in dynamic systems. Such a more general perspective prepares our discussion of the structures of both narratives and politics and in doing so contributes to the explanation of their interaction. (shrink)

The sociobiological and socio-political aspects of human existence have been the subject of techno-rationalistic control and manipulation. The investigation of the mutual complementarity of anthropological and ontological paradigms under these circumstances is the main purpose of present publication. The comparative conceptual analysis of the bio-power and bio-politics in the mentality of the modern technological civilization is a main method of the research. The methodological and philosophical analogy of biological and social engineering allows combining them in the nature and social (...) implications as part of a High Hume technologies class. As result of the transformation of somatic foundations of the human being and his behavior, stereotypes in the object of control and management the technogenic risk reached the existential level. The rapidly growing status of biopower and biopolitics in the conceptual field of contemporary political science becomes by phenomenological expression of these processes. (shrink)

This paper enquires into the politics of real-time in online media. It suggests that real-time cannot be accounted for as a universal temporal frame in which events happen, but explores the making of real-time from a device perspective focusing on the temporalities of platforms. Based on an empirical study exploring the pace at which various online media produce new content, we trace the different rhythms, patterns or tempos created by the interplay of devices, users’ web activities and issues. What emerges (...) are distinct forms of ‘realtimeness’ which are not external from but specific to devices, organized through socio-technical arrangements and practices of use. Realtimeness thus unflattens more general accounts of the real-time web and research, and draws attention to the agencies built into specific platform temporalities and the political economies of making real-time. (shrink)

This article explores the category of biopolitics through the use Roberto Esposito and Giorgio Agamben make of two Greek words, bios and ōē. In particular, I argue that the separation of bios and ōē as introduced in Homo Sacer has no "natural" nor "lingual" relevance. The exposition of such a fabulous antinomy simply ruins the historical matter of Agamben's discourse on biopolitics. Here, Esposito's research could be read as an attempt to found the category of biopolitics anew without repeating the (...) fiction of a bifurcation between ōē and bios. However, Esposito, in his own celebration of biopower, undermines the very power of language and, thus, ignores the variation of the invariant that is history. Esposito's and Agamben's difficulties lead us back to the possible ambition of all politics to absorb all life, as it was already expressed by Aristotle. In this sense, "modern biopolitics" becomes a case study for the totalitarian temptation of political order. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to present how ancient and modern thinkers describe politics and to discuss reasons for differences seen in these definitions. In the ancient period, the identification of human being as a political entity by nature caused politics to be seen as the most supreme of all human activities. For the ancient thinkers, politics is conceptualized as a pluralist area in which the common issues are discussed by equals and also which excludes inequality. Ancient thinker (...) Aristotle says that the purpose of politics is “good life”. However, modern political thought which began with Machiavelli identified politics with the concepts of force, power and violence. Politics is defined by Machiavelli and his successors as the legitimate organization of physical violence, the distribution of power, value and resources by authority. While in the Ancient Greece violence is excluded from the public-political sphere, It has become one of the central concepts defining the political society in the modern world. While the human being was defined as a political entity (zoon politikon) in the ancient period, it is usually seen as an economic entity (homo economicus) in the modern period. For the ancients good life means a life that is dedicated to politics; nevertheless, it has been often associated with econo- mic activity by the moderns. This study argues that the main difference between the political definitions of ancients and moderns stem from differences between their perspectives about the aim of human and human life. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 16, Issue 3, Page 101-115, September 2011.

The personal and the political, the local and the global—divergent perspectives are synthesized in this visionary examination of globalization and how it affects individual lives. Personal stories of urban and rural living reveal the many varieties of experience and how Western culture has created both immense wealth and poverty. Discussions of primary production, neoclassical economics, and international trade agreements accompany writing about nature and how rural life is deeply connected to land.

Questions concerning moral problems caused by the lifesciences and concerning the adequate methods and instruments to solve these are timely and urgent; especially in the face of intense debates on the acceptability of research on human embryonic stem cells and preimplantation diagnostics, to name only two applications developed from research in the life-sciences. Unfortunately, the constant and accusing demand that life-scientists must behave morally does not give us a clue on how ethics may help in establishing guidelines for moral behaviour. (...) In this heated situation the foundation of ethics-committees seems to be the motto of the day. But instead of functioning as necessary and fruitful scientific advisory boards, these committees run the risk of being misused as a fashionable (and soon forgotten) weapon in the battle for political opinion-leadership. In the following article, the view is defended that ethics is a scientific enterprise and has an important role to play in political decision making on lifesciences issues. Content Type Journal Article Pages 29-31 Authors Felix Thiele, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler GmbH, Wilhelmstrasse 56, D-53474 Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany Journal Human Reproduction & Genetic Ethics Online ISSN 2043-0469 Print ISSN 1028-7825 Journal Volume Volume 8 Journal Issue Volume 8, Number 2 / 2002. (shrink)

For Hannah Arendt, spontaneous, ‘initiatory’ human action and interaction are suppressed by the normalizing pressures of society once ‘life’ - that is, sheer life - becomes the primary concern of politics, as it does, she finds, in the modern age. Arendt’s concept of the social is indebted to Martin Heidegger’s analysis of everyday Dasein in Being and Time , and contemporary political philosophers inspired by Heidegger, such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Giorgio Agamben, tend to reproduce her account (...) of the withdrawal of the political in modernity. In this article, I complicate Arendt’s theory by turning to Michel Foucault’s parallel but diverging understanding of the nature of power in modern society to show, surprisingly, that Foucault’s narrative of the emergence of modern power pictures a society that is more, not less, politicized. Key Words: Hannah Arendt • bio-power • Michel Foucault • Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe • modernity • Jean-Luc Nancy • pastoral power • the social • rulership. (shrink)

In this essay I consider whether the political perspective of third wave science studies – ‘elective modernism’ – offers a suitable framework for understanding the policy-making contributions that (bio)ethical experts might make. The question arises as a consequence of the fact that I have taken inspiration from the third wave in order to develop an account of (bio)ethical expertise. I offer a précis of this work and a brief summary of elective modernism before considering their relation. The view I (...) set out suggests that elective modernism is a political philosophy and that although its use in relation to the use of scientific expertise in political and policy-making process has implications for the role of (bio)ethical expertise it does not, in the final analysis, provide an account that is appropriate for this latter form of specialist expertise. Nevertheless, it is an informative perspective, and one that can help us make sense of the political uses of (bio)ethical expertise. (shrink)

Drawing on case studies from the modern era of pharmaceutical regulation in the UK, US and Europe, I examine how the extent and distribution of trust between regulators, the pharmaceutical industry, and the medical profession about drug testing and monitoring influences knowledge and regulatory judgements about the efficacy and safety of prescription drugs. Introducing the concepts of ‘acquiescent’ and ‘investigative’ norms of regulatory trust, I demonstrate how investigative norms of regulatory trust—which deter pharmaceutical companies from assuming that their data analyses (...) will be accepted without independent de-construction—drive up bioethical and regulatory standards of drug assessment in the interests of health. By contrast, acquiescent norms of regulatory trust, which are associated with industrial capture and professional closure of interests, promote permissive standards allowing patients to take pharmaceuticals with greater risks to health and less evidence of therapeutic efficacy. (shrink)

Roberto Esposito, Bíos: Biopolitics and Philosophy, with an intro. and trans. Timothy Campbell. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008; Nikolas Rose, The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-first Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.

La biopolítica ha devenido, sin duda, una de las categorías centrales para la reflexión política contemporánea. Dada su importancia, resulta imperioso avanzar sobre algunas operaciones teóricas que no logran dar cuenta de su especificidad, en tanto que administración de la vida como forma de dominación. Al respecto, y con la intención de rehabilitar la conceptualización de la política, nos interesa demostrar cómo la aparente dicotomía entre zoé y bíos que pretende discutir Agamben no encuentra respaldo en los textos que él (...) mismo utiliza (fundamentalmente, Aristóteles y Foucault), ni tampoco en la cristalización de tales categorías en prácticas sociopolíticas (por ejemplo, la disciplina moderna con sus raíces en el monasterio cristiano). Precisamente, la identificación de la zoé ya como forma de vida es lo que nos permite comprender el interés biopolítico por gestionar la vida biológica. Así, solamente habiendo clarificado estas categorías, podrá rehabilitarse un pensamiento político sobre la política. (shrink)

Roberto Esposito is one of the most prolific and important exponents of contemporary Italian political theory.

By considering the position of education as a pharmakon, highlighting its potential positive and negative effects on societies by its technical unfolding, the article proposes to explore the political and pedagogical role that public and collective performances can have within the public sphere as political devices for promoting and enacting radical democracy. To this end, it analyzes a contemporary collaborative artistic practice, the performance ‘Un Violador en Tu Camino’ (‘A rapist in your path’) by the feminist collective LASTESIS (...) from Chile, through two main philosophical perspectives: Bernard Stiegler (1952 – 2020), and his approach to technology, to art, and education in human societies; and Oliver Marchart, coming from his conceptualization of art and activism through the notion of conflictual aesthetics. (shrink)