Animals in Biopolitical Theory: Between Agamben and Negri
Michel Foucault's notion of 'biopolitics' has attained a renewed prominence in recent years through its reworking by, among others, Antonio Negri and Giorgio Agamben, who have each incorporated it into their different diagnoses of our contemporary political situation. But for all thei...
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| Published in | New formations Vol. 76; no. 76; pp. 53 - 67 |
|---|---|
| Main Author | |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
London
Lawrence & Wishart
30.09.2012
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| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
| ISSN | 0950-2378 1741-0789 |
| DOI | 10.3898/NEWF.76.04.2012 |
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| Abstract | Michel Foucault's notion of 'biopolitics' has attained a renewed prominence in recent years through its reworking by, among others, Antonio Negri and Giorgio Agamben, who have each incorporated it into their different diagnoses of our contemporary political situation. But for all their
attention to biology and life, and indeed the politicisation of such, they give little consideration to the subjection of animals within the regimes of biopower they critique. This essay will examine the biopolitical theories of these key Italian philosophers, asking whether and how they might
be elaborated in eco- and zoo-political terms, such that we might critique the animalising reduction and biological production of human and nonhuman life together. |
|---|---|
| AbstractList | Michel Foucault's notion of 'biopolitics' has attained a renewed prominence in recent years through its reworking by, among others, Antonio Negri and Giorgio Agamben, who have each incorporated it into their different diagnoses of our contemporary political situation. But for all their
attention to biology and life, and indeed the politicisation of such, they give little consideration to the subjection of animals within the regimes of biopower they critique. This essay will examine the biopolitical theories of these key Italian philosophers, asking whether and how they might
be elaborated in eco- and zoo-political terms, such that we might critique the animalising reduction and biological production of human and nonhuman life together. Important for Foucault was how the ability of certain political technologies (from agriculture to nuclear power) to stake the life of whole populations saw societies cross a 'threshold of biological modernity [seuil de modernité biologique]'.4 This modem biopolitics, for Foucault, took as its task the regulation of the birth and mortality rates, disease and health, security and risk of a statistically defined population; it dovetailed with the 'anatomo-politics' by which capital disciplined the productive capacity of bodies. [...]as elsewhere, this site of indistinction also allows Agamben to posit a zone of experimentation with potentiality that might allow the human/animal (binding-dividing) relation to be rendered inoperative. [...]in a familiar turn to Benjaminian messianic gestures to recast his dark reflections on Heidegger - what de la Durantaye refers to as his 'Benjamin ex machina'16 - Agamben closes with the figure of a Titian painting that he interprets in terms of 'the saved night,' creation abandoned to itself, beyond Being. At the hands of the scientific and food industry 'camps,' massive numbers of animals suffer the most anonymous exposure.35 In an essay that prefigured The Open, Dinesh Wadiwel pointed out how 'human society actively constitutes the limit for bare life within factory farms and experimental laboratories, the life of the non-human animal captured within this sphere of exception'.3" This point is most forcefully made in the controversial comparison of such zones of indistinction with the Nazi extermination camps.37 In trying to come to terms with PETA's 'Holocaust On Your Plate' Exhibition, Nathan Snaza explicitly invokes Agamben's concepts of biopolitics, naked life and the 'impossible witness' who emerges from the indistinction between the human and inhuman in the concentration camps.38 The ensuing debate raises significant issues regarding responsibility to nonhuman life, such as the legitimacy of comparing violence against humans and animals, and the limits of the language of legal rights (which, despite significant advances in the treatment of heretofore excluded subjects, is for Agamben always premised on a sovereign exception of those whose rights it is acceptable to suspend). Negri characterises Agamben as split between the experience of death and the task of redemption: between the paralysing horror of bare life (in his conception of the biopolitical state of exception as 'indifferent to antagonism') and the messianic work of building something new within the plane of a 'realist and revolutionary' immanence.51 Reflecting on his personal and philosophical relationship to Agamben, Negri has said that '[m]y polemics with Giorgio always have had to do with this tension in his thought: ... in the sense that he tends and stretches toward the extreme limit of being so as to extract from it some kind of new and purified language'.52 For Negri, the constitutive weakness of his thought lies in the exclusion of production in favour of a more passive model of potentiality.53 Bare life can even function ideologically, Negri claims, as a mystification insinuating that sovereign power reduces us to powerlessness: 'Naked life is the opposite of any Spinozian power and joy of the body', he writes, 'But life is more powerful than nakedness'.54 Negri's books co-authored with Michael Hardt can be seen as an attempt to reinvigorate the failing negativity of postmodern thought, fusing Marxism with post-structuralism in a new vision for radical politics.55 Their work has been enormously influential and controversial, provoking discussion and criticism from a number of quarters.56 We are witnessing, they argue, a new global regime of power. Michel Foucault's notion of 'biopolitics' has attained a renewed prominence in recent years through its reworking by, among others, Antonio Negri and Giorgio Agamben, who have each incorporated it into their different diagnoses of our contemporary political situation. But for all their attention to biology and life, and indeed the politicisation of such, they give little consideration to the subjection of animals within the regimes of biopower they critique. This essay will examine the biopolitical theories of these key Italian philosophers, asking whether and how they might be elaborated in eco- and zoo-political terms, such that we might critique the animalising reduction and biological production of human and nonhuman life together. (Author abstract) Michel Foucault's notion of 'biopolitics' has attained a renewed prominence in recent years through its reworking by, among others, Antonio Negri and Giorgio Agamben, who have each incorporated it into their different diagnoses of our contemporary political situation. But for all their attention to biology and life, and indeed the politicisation of such, they give little consideration to the subjection of animals within the regimes of biopower they critique. This essay will examine the biopolitical theories of these key Italian philosophers, asking whether and how they might be elaborated in eco- and zoo-political terms, such that we might critique the animalising reduction and biological production of human and nonhuman life together. |
| Author | Chrulew, Matthew |
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| Snippet | Michel Foucault's notion of 'biopolitics' has attained a renewed prominence in recent years through its reworking by, among others, Antonio Negri and Giorgio... Important for Foucault was how the ability of certain political technologies (from agriculture to nuclear power) to stake the life of whole populations saw... |
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| SubjectTerms | Agamben Animals Biopolitics Contemporary political ideas Foucault Foucault, Michel Italy Negri Philosophers Political conditions Politicization |
| Title | Animals in Biopolitical Theory: Between Agamben and Negri |
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