Accounting and Biopolitics: An Italian Perspective

The chapter investigates the contributions of accounting to biopolitics, the exercise of power over life. Drawing upon Foucault’s ideas on biopower, Agamben’s understanding of the functioning of biopolitics has risen to particular prominence. Unlike Foucault, Agamben does not merely see the ultimate goal of biopower as that of producing life, but stresses its negative consequences by mobilising his concepts of state of exception and bare life. The ways in which biopower is used to create states of exception and reduce human beings to bare life and the related contributions of accounting technologies will be illustrated by means of two Italian examples. The management of the Fossoli concentration camp under the Fascist regime and the recent intervention by the Italian government in the COVID-19 pandemics show how accounting can become a potent tool in the exercise of biopower, one which has significant effects on the way in which people conduct themselves.