Course Contents
n the course of the development of modern liberal forms of government, Foucault coined the enigmatic terms biopolitics and biopower. Liberal societies, according to his thesis, formulate the political rationalities of governance by drawing on economic knowledge and target the lives of the population as the central object of the exercise of power. Foucault thus not only gave the analysis of liberalism a material point of reference, but also offered a way of understanding the extreme forms of state violence in the 20th century in their continuity with liberal biopolitics. Over the last few decades, Foucault's concept of biopolitics has undergone multiple, sometimes contradictory revisions. On the one hand, attempts have been made to focus more closely on colonial forms of necropolitics. On the other hand, there are approaches that seek not only to make biopolitics or biopower a concept of critique, but also to conceive of affirmative forms of government of life. In recent years, the combination of financial crisis, authoritarian politics and ecological crises, as well as the rapid development of digital platform economies, has challenged Foucault's concepts of biopolitics and biopower. Can Foucault's theoretical tools help us understand the world of affective and psychological colonisation, denial, financial circulation and political authoritarianism? In this seminar, we will first familiarise ourselves with Foucault's concepts by reading his lectures on governmentality and his account of biopolitics in other writings. We will then turn to further developments of the concept in the secondary literature and conclude by examining the relevance of his theses today.
- Lecturer: Ute Tellmann