Frost, Tom (2024) Biopower and sovereignty in Foucault and Agamben. In: Research Handbook on the Law and Politics of Sovereignty. Research Handbooks in Law and Politics series . Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, Massachusetts, USA. (In press) (Access to this publication is currently restricted. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:104335)
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Abstract
Michel Foucault articulated the hypothesis of biopower and biopolitics in the 1970s, and Giorgio Agamben developed this hypothesis in his Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, published in English in 1998. Since these interventions, biopower and biopolitics have become indispensable as a theoretical point of reference in the humanities and social sciences. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue that in the last thirty years the process of biopower and biopolitical regulation has increased, so much so that today every aspect of social relation is subjected to the operations of this power.
This chapter considers the position of biopower in the thought of Foucault and Agamben, and how the two conceive of power and resistance to power. It examines how biopower relates to sovereign power in both philosophers’ work, and specifically how Agamben’s development of Foucault’s thought is radical and offers a markedly different direction to scholarship on biopower and its relationship to sovereign power. Despite the relative age of Foucault’s writings, they continue to offer conceptual and theoretical tools for scholars in ways that Agamben’s theories and work do not. I use the example of the coronavirus pandemic to illustrate the shortcomings in Agamben’s thought. Finally, this chapter draws on recent work by Alexander Weheliye and Achille Mbembé to explore the close relationship between sexuality and race, and to show how both gender and race open up new avenues for exploring biopower and its relationship to sovereignty in the twenty-first century.
Item Type: | Book section |
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Uncontrolled keywords: | Foucault; Agamben; sovereignty; biopower |
Subjects: |
B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) J Political Science > JC Political theory K Law > K Law (General) |
Divisions: | Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > Kent Law School |
Funders: | University of Kent (https://ror.org/00xkeyj56) |
Depositing User: | Tom Frost |
Date Deposited: | 18 Dec 2023 16:14 UTC |
Last Modified: | 02 Jan 2024 14:50 UTC |
Resource URI: | https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/104335 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes) |
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