Foucault-L

[Foucault-L] CFP AAG 2007 Always look on the dark side? The biopolitics of life and death

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Apologies for cross posting, but this might be of interested to some on this list
Louisa
<P style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"><FONT size=3>CALL FOR PAPERS: <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"><FONT size=3>Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, 17-21 April 2007, San <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:place><st1:City><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Francisco</SPAN></B></st1:City><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN lang=EN-GB>, </SPAN></B><st1:State><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN lang=EN-GB>California</SPAN></B></st1:State></st1:place><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN lang=EN-GB> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">?Always look on the dark side?? The biopolitics of life and death<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>?[M]assacres have become vital? (Foucault 1998)</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>&nbsp;</FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN lang=EN-GB>?[L]</SPAN><st1:City><st1:place><SPAN lang=EN-GB>ife</SPAN></st1:place></st1:City><SPAN lang=EN-GB> and death are not properly scientific concepts but rather political concepts, which acquire a political meaning precisely only through a decision? (Agamben 1999)</SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">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 <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Collège</I> <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">de France</I>, 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 
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>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. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Topics for this session may include:</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">bios</I> of biopower</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>War and biopower</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Security and pre-emptive biopower</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>States/spaces of exception</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Detention, torture and confession</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Necropolitics</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Law and Sovereign power</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Decisionism and/or undecidability </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Human rights and humanitarianism</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>National and global governmentalities and biopower</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Racism, genocide and caesuras within biopolitics</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Eugenics and/or risk politics</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Bare life</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Care rationing</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The life unworthy of being lived</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The right to life and the right to die</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Contestations over end of life decisions: in/capacity, assisted suicide, assisted euthanasia, living wills, palliative care and the good death</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Suicide and suicide prevention</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The law, unpunishability and suicide </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"><FONT size=3><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">Expressions of interest should be sent to L.cadman@xxxxxxxxx by </SPAN><st1:date Year="2006" Day="21" Month="8"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">Monday 21st August 2006</SPAN></st1:date><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"><FONT size=3>Abstracts (250 words max) should be submitted to L.cadman@xxxxxxxxx by<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"><FONT size=3><st1:date Year="2006" Day="16" Month="10"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">Monday 16<SUP>th</SUP> October 2006</SPAN></st1:date><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
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