MICHEL FOUCAULT, info.

Apologies for cross posting, but this might be of interested to some on this list Louisa

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, 17-21 April 2007, San

Francisco, California

?Always look on the dark side?? The biopolitics of life and death

?[M]assacres have become vital? (Foucault 1998)

 

?[L]ife and death are not properly scientific concepts but rather political concepts, which acquire a political meaning precisely only through a decision? (Agamben 1999)

The past few years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in Foucault?s formation of biopower - the power to make live and foster life. This, in part, is a reflection of the ongoing publication of Foucault?s lectures at the Collège de France, but has also arisen in the wake of unprecedented shifts in biotechnology and the biosciences through, for example, the Human Genome Project and, more recently, stem cell research. Yet, like the power to foster life, Foucault?s original formation of biopower also entails the power to disallow it to the point of death. Foucault?s own particular take on this ?puzzling? life and death game was to be located historically in the caesuras of twentieth century state racisms. Here killing or the imperative to kill ?was acceptable if it results not in a victory over political adversaries, but in the elimination of biological threats to and the improvement of the species or race? (Foucault 2003). For Foucault this was not simply killing but exposure to death or political death for biological ?abnormalities?. If, however, the recent work of Agamben is to be taken seriously then thanatopolitics, as the politics of death, must not be restricted to twentieth century fascist and totalitarian states but is rooted in the very metaphysical structure of our politics - the ?inclusive exclusion? of bare or naked life. Today through the paradoxical excesses of contemporary biopolitics we are all at risk, it seems, of becoming forms of bare or naked life subject to a sovereign decision on death. Indeed, beyond the oft cited examples of contemporary warfare and

This session - which is inspired by, but certainly not restricted to, different understandings of biopower and sovereign power in Foucault and Agamben - aims, in the first instance, to draw on what Mitchell Dean (2001) has termed the ?dark side? of contemporary biopolitics: ?liminal lives? and ?liminal zones? in our contemporary biopolitics of health care, disability, war, geopolitical borders, refugee camps, humanitarian aid and in the enactment of human rights. Theoretical engagements with different conceptions of biopolitics, biopower and thanatopolitics are also welcome, as are historical and contemporary empirical papers addressing biopolitical themes.

Topics for this session may include:

The bios of biopower

War and biopower

Security and pre-emptive biopower

States/spaces of exception

Detention, torture and confession

Necropolitics

Law and Sovereign power

Decisionism and/or undecidability

Human rights and humanitarianism

National and global governmentalities and biopower

Racism, genocide and caesuras within biopolitics

Eugenics and/or risk politics

Bare life

Care rationing

The life unworthy of being lived

The right to life and the right to die

Contestations over end of life decisions: in/capacity, assisted suicide, assisted euthanasia, living wills, palliative care and the good death

Suicide and suicide prevention

The law, unpunishability and suicide

Expressions of interest should be sent to L.cadman@xxxxxxxxx by Monday 21st August 2006

Abstracts (250 words max) should be submitted to L.cadman@xxxxxxxxx by

Monday 16^th October 2006.

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