Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction
- ISBN-10
- 0814752993
- ISBN-13
- 9780814752999
- Category
- Social Science
- Pages
- 158
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2011-02-07
- Publisher
- NYU Press
- Authors
- Thomas Lemke, Lisa Jean Moore, Monica J. Casper
Description
The biological features of human beings are now measured, observed, and understood in ways never before thought possible, defining norms, establishing standards, and determining average values of human life. While the notion of “biopolitics” has been linked to everything from rational decision-making and the democratic organization of social life to eugenics and racism, Thomas Lemke offers the very first systematic overview of the history of the notion of biopolitics, exploring its relevance in contemporary theoretical debates and providing a much needed primer on the topic. Lemke explains that life has become an independent, objective and measurable factor as well as a collective reality that can be separated from concrete living beings and the singularity of individual experience. He shows how our understanding of the processes of life, the organizing of populations and the need to “govern” individuals and collectives lead to practices of correction, exclusion, normalization, and disciplining. In this lucidly written book, Lemke outlines the stakes and the debates surrounding biopolitics, providing a systematic overview of the history of the notion and making clear its relevance for sociological and contemporary theoretical debates.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978--1979
By Michel FoucaultA sixth compilation of lectures delivered at the Collège de France between 1970 and 1984 continues the speaker's coverage of 18th-century political economy, evaluating its role in the origins of a liberal governmental rationality that is ...
-
The Routledge Handbook of Biopolitics
By Sergei Prozorov, Simona RenteaThis Handbook brings these two debates together, combining theoretical sophistication and empirical rigour. The volume is divided into five sections.
-
Humans, Animals and Biopolitics: The more-than-human condition
By Steve Hinchliffe, Kristin Asdal, Tone DruglitroBy bringing together historically-oriented approaches and contemporary ethnographies which engage with science and technology studies (STS), this book reflects the multi-sited, multi-species, multi-logic and multiple ways in which lives are ...
-
Bíos: Biopolitics and Philosophy
By Roberto EspositoRoberto Esposito is one of the most prolific and important exponents of contemporary Italian political theory.
-
The Biopolitics of Water: Governance, Scarcity and Populations
By Sofie HellbergThis volume provides a biopolitical perspective on water governance and its effects.
-
The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century
By Kyla SchullerIn The Biopolitics of Feeling Kyla Schuller unearths the forgotten, multiethnic sciences of impressibility—the capacity to be transformed by one's environment and experiences—to uncover how biopower developed in the United States.
-
Biopolitics: A Reader
By Timothy C. Campbell, Adam SitzeA compilation of the primary texts—by Foucault, Arendt, Agamben, Badiou, and other theorists—that laid the ground for contemporary thinking about biopolitics, or the relations between life and politics.
-
The Biopolitics of Lifestyle: Foucault, Ethics and Healthy Choices
By Christopher MayesThis work focuses on the biopolitical use of lifestyle to govern individual choice and secure population health from the threat of obesity.
-
Resisting Biopolitics: Philosophical, Political, and Performative Strategies
By S.E. Wilmer, Audroné ŽukauskaitėThis cutting-edge volume discusses the philosophical, social, and political notions of biopolitics, as well as the ways in which biopower affects all aspects of our lives, including the relationships between the human and nonhuman, the ...
-
The Biopolitics of Gender
By Jemima RepoThrough the use of a diverse mix of historical and contemporary documents, the book explores how the problematisation of intersex infant genitalia in 1950s psychiatry propelled the emergence of the gender apparatus in order to socialise ...