Search results for "biopolitiikka"

A parody of action : Politics and pantomime in Agamben's critique of Arendt

2021

Introduction

2022

In the introduction to the volume, the editors explain the overarching aim of the volume and contextualize the main themes of its chapters. Even if the notions of biopolitics and biopower have played a crucial role in philosophy, the humanities, and the social sciences over the last decades, they have been used in various and at times diverging senses, which has also produced different narratives about the history of biopolitics. The main aim of the volume is to clarify whether and to what extent the concept of biopolitics is applicable to antiquity. To answer such questions, the chapters collected in the volume address three main topics, namely the possible presence of biopolitical discour…

Liberaali välttämättömyys ja paljaan elämän politiikka

2010

Mind your Manners : Agamben and Phish

2021

In the final volume of his Homo Sacer series Giorgio Agamben develops the concept of destituent power, a power that unworks itself in every constitution and renders itself inoperative in its every operation. This concept helps elucidate Agamben’s more enigmatic notion of form-of-life. Whereas the power of sovereign biopolitics is constitutive, i.e. constituting a determinate actual bios out of the indefinite potentialities of zoe, form-of-life exemplifies the power of rendering actual and determinate forms inoperative or destitute. Rather than attempt to devise a ‘proper’ form of life, Agamben seeks to free life from the gravity of all tasks or vocations imposed on it by privileged forms. W…

Sivullinen, toinen, muukalainen : Camus toiseuden representoijana

2007

Tutkimukseni lähtökohtana on Albert Camus’n teos Sivullinen (L’Etranger). Tarkoituksena on tarkastella, kuinka Camus esittää sivullisuuden ja mitä viittauksia myöhemmässä tutkimuskirjallisuudessa on Sivulliseen. Aikomuksenani on tarkastella toiseutta tutkimus- ja osin kaunokirjallisuuden valossa ja selvittää siihen liittyviä syntyprosesseja ja politiikkoja, jotka johtavat tuohon ulkopuolisuuden tilaan. Tutkin myös sitä, millainen on sivullisen asema politiikan kentällä ja millaista politiikkaa sivullisen positiosta on mahdollista harjoittaa. Ensisijainen tutkimusmetodini on tulkitseva tekstianalyysi. Laajimmalle ulottuvan teoriapohjan työssäni muodostaa biopolitiikan-käsite, joka ulottuu ka…

Biopolitics in the Political Thought of Classical Greece

2016

This article deals with biopolitics in classical Greek thought. Its aim is to demonstrate that biopolitics is not a distinctively modern phenomenon. It is as old a phenomenon as western political thought itself. Focusing on Aristotle’s Politics as well as Plato’s Republic and Laws, I argue that the politico-philosophical categories of classical thought were already biopolitical categories. In their books on politics, Plato and Aristotle do not only deal with all the central topics of biopolitics (sexual intercourse, marriage, pregnancy, childcare, public health, education, population, and so forth) from the political point of view but for them these topics are the very keystone of politics …

Biopolitics and Hegemony in Contemporary Russian Cultural Policy

2018

Since 2011, Russian ‘licensing civil society’ 1 has predominated through censorship and the restrictive regulation of arts and cultural societies. The current conservative project has turned artistic space into public space, indicating moral abuse and a threat to the spiritual health of the Russian nation. Consequently, the symbolic borders of human creativity and individual freedom in arts and cultural societies have been reduced to patriotism, nationalism and moral deductive functions of the state-approved program. This paper will explore Russian state cultural policy and argue that biopolitics is its mainstream strategy. It examines how the ensemble of sovereign and disciplinary power de…

Precarious Sovereignty in a Post-Liberal Europe : the Covid-19 Emergency in Estonia and Finland

2020

The paper addresses a puzzle resulting from the current global state of alert: the coronavirus pandemic brought us back to the world of the allegedly sovereign nation states with borders and national governments in charge, yet in fact, this retrieved sovereignty looks very vulnerable and precarious. We explain this controversy through a triad of concepts—sovereignty, governmentality, and post-liberalism—that we apply to an analysis of a corona-imposed state of emergency in Estonia and Finland. Based on comparative case study research, we posit that sovereignty is precarious in post-liberalism due to its large dependence on the technologies of responsibilization and agency. From a biopolitic…

Jatkuvuutta, kumppanuutta ja pervoa biopolitiikkaa hankalassa maailmassa

2018

Was Thomas Hobbes the first biopolitical thinker?

2023

Thomas Hobbes's name often comes up as scholars debate the history of biopower, which regulates the biological life of individual bodies and entire populations. This article examines whether and to what extent Hobbes may be regarded as the first biopolitical philosopher. I investigate this question by performing a close reading of Hobbes's political texts and by comparing them to some of the most influential theories on biopolitics proposed by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and others. Hobbes is indeed the first great thinker to assert the supreme political importance of safeguarding life. Furthermore, this prominence of non-contemplative life is not limited to mere su…