Biopolitics: A Reader

by Timothy C. Campbell (Editor), Adam Sitze (Editor)

This anthology collects the texts that defined the concept of biopolitics, which has become so significant throughout the humanities and social sciences today. The far-reaching influence of the biopolitical—the relation of politics to life, or the state to the body—is not surprising given its centrality to matters such as healthcare, abortion, immigration, and the global distribution of essential medicines and medical technologies.

Michel Foucault gave new and unprecedented meaning to the term "biopolitics" in his 1976 essay "Right of Death and Power over Life." In this anthology, that touchstone piece is followed by essays in which biopolitics is implicitly anticipated as a problem by Hannah Arendt and later altered, critiqued, deconstructed, and refined by major political and social theorists who explicitly engaged with Foucault's ideas. By focusing on the concept of biopolitics, rather than applying it to specific events and phenomena, this Reader provides an enduring framework for assessing the central problematics of modern political thought.

Contributors. Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Alain Badiou, Timothy Campbell, Gilles Deleuze, Roberto Esposito, Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway, Michael Hardt, Achille Mbembe, Warren Montag, Antonio Negri, Jacques Rancière, Adam Sitze, Peter Sloterdijk, Paolo Virno, Slavoj Žižek

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, School, Essays, Academic

456 pages, Hardcover

First published December 6, 2013

About the author

Timothy C. Campbell is Professor of Italian in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell University.

Reviews

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS IS HOW YOU DO A SCHOLARLY ANTHOLOGY!

Biopolitics covers the major developments in the theory originally advanced by Foucault in the closing chapters of the The History of Sexuality, Vol I, that life itself had become the terrain of politics, and that power had transformed from an ancient sovereign power equipped with the sword, to a modern knowledge/power invisibly working its normalizing measures through every extremity of the population. Foucault never fully developed his theory, but it was taken up wide array of philosophers and political theoreticians, most notably Giorgio Agamben and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire.

Campbell and Sitze have done an invaluable service collecting the various readings into one volume. I appreciate the inclusion of Hannah Arendt as a late humanist foundation to the most esoteric works later on, and the inclusion of pieces by Zizek, Deluze, and Badiou as the 'limits' of biopolitical thought. The introduction is in and of itself an impressive piece of synthesis, looking at the many definitions of biopolitics.

This book is invaluable for a newcomer to the field, could easily be used as the core of a graduate seminar, and even for someone familiar with the works, puts them in useful conversation.

[Vapula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting topic and a good reader to start with for biopolitics

[Dan's]

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/crisis-...

[Liz Busby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for biopolitical dystopia class. I can't say that I thoroughly read every piece in here, but I've at least skimmed every one. I must say that I haven't come out the other side as a big fan of theory, especially biopolitics itself. I found many if not most of the writing styles completely unreadable, which was a big contrast to reading C. S. Lewis's literary theories earlier this year. Many of our class discussions seems to hinge on a single phrase or idea which was all we could comprehend of the text; to me, that says that the thinking that led to these ideas is just not that clear or organized.

There is always the possibility that I'm just too pedestrian and non-philosophical to understand, but the more I read in the world, I begin to think that the problem is with the theorists and not with me. Clear writing is a sign of clear ideas and I'm not exactly a novice-level reader. If you can't make yourself clearly understood even to people in a graduate program, then is what you're saying really worth saying? (Too far? Have I said the quiet part out loud?) Anyway, it's good to have a background in some of these ideas so at least I can recognize the names and general concepts when they come up, but I don't picture them having a particularly strong influence on my own work in the future. As for the anthology itself, I wished for better textual apparatus--footnotes, summaries of sections skipped, definitions and translations of terms, all of these would have made the experience of reading these texts much more manageable.

[ػᶈᶏϾӗ]

The last two essays were kind of disappointing - maybe just because they didn't mention Foucault, and it's not (readily) apparent their intersection with biopolitics. Zizek's essay on human life and singularity also seems like it would have fit better than the (poorly titled) piece appearing here, although it was rather a good essay. On the whole, I think the European Project is pretty dull and limited, especially since seeing how Eurocentric some of these writers are, and seeing their rhetoric picked up by white supremacists on all sides of the atlantic. So I was most grateful for some of the works here that grind against eurocentricism - Mbembe, for sure, Agamben a bit, even Foucault to a degree. Biopolitics and racism are linked. To only read biopolitics in a european, "first world" sense is to ignore some of the real exclusions at the heart of globalization and democracy.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the essays I read these were definitely not geared towards ppl unfamiliar with the concept, even if it does include Foucault's famous chapter from the end of Will to Knowledge. The essays don't limit themselves to Foucault's brief exposure of biopolitics but reinterpret and expand it into a seed from which a multiplicity of related concepts emerge. My guess is you'd find yourself struggling through most pages of this unless you do some prep reading (luckily I found a rly good paper in Portuguese outlining the concept which I read with a couple of friends and studied on my own time).

A book I barely got a grasp of but one I'm glad to have become vaguely familiar with since it'll definitely help with referencing and exploring ideas that seem critical in explaining contemporary strategies of power in a post covid world.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed with this collection, specifically, the editing. Many of the individual essays themselves have really important ideas, but hidden in dense language. It is the editor's job to introduce readers to these texts in a way that makes them more accessible, but he didn't do that. The introduction was even more jargon-filled than the individual essays, mashing up words like it was the editor's job to confuse readers with neologisms. Then the essays are presented without any context or explanation of who these people are and when they are writing. Yeah, I'm a grad student, I can look it up. Or maybe I could pay some expert money to situate the texts in the context of a greater philosophical discourse? Just throwing out a crazy idea here.

[Pearse Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned almost nothing from these dense texts, likely because this was rented for a 400-level class on biopolitics that never explained biopolitics. I can't separate the course from this book, apologies. I just had no fun.

[Jay Jolles · Rating 5 out of 5]

As far as edited volumes go.... *the ok fingers emoji*

[Cihan çiçek · Rating 3 out of 5]

SBK' okumalarından.

Biyopolitika'nın yapıtaşlarına göz atmak için. İyi bir başlangıç kitabı olabilir. Burdan yola devam edilir.

Sevgiler.

[athony]

Add Foucault's "Right of Death and Power over Life" to list of the most mind-blowing things I've ever read

[Marty Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helpful collection.

[Mills College Library]

320.01 B6159 2013