Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governmentality

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Towards an Affirmative Biopolitics On the Importance of Thinking the Relations Between Life and Error Polemologically Julian Reid “Who knows how to live well if he does not first know a good deal about war and victory?” 1 However complex the genealogy of the claim that war is the constitutive capacity for life is found to be within the counter-strategic tradition of modern political and philosophical thought (and it is deeply so), it is arguably to Nietzsche that we owe most for that understanding. 2 War was, for Nietzsche, not simply a primeval condition from which life must remove itself in order to secure the means for its peaceful flourishing, nor that instrument of the state which must merely be better deployed against other states, in order to secure the conditions for peace and security among its society, nor, for that matter, merely a mechanism by which the state secures itself from the disorder of the life it seeks to govern, but, rather, that which is ontologically fundamental for that life, and which, in being so, is formative of the conditions by which we might otherwise learn how to “live well” in struggle with powers seeking to stifle life of its capacities for such a knowledge. War is a fundamental capacity of life and in being so, is 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974), 255. 2 I have explored the depth and complexity of the function of war in determining the political ontology of what I have named the “counter-strategic” tradition of political thought in a variety of previous texts. Within this tradition I include Foucault, Deleuze, Virilio, Baudrillard, Negri, and Clausewitz, as well as Nietzsche. See especially The Biopolitics of the War on Terror: Life Struggles, Liberal Modernity and the Defence of Logistical Societies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006); “Re-appropriating Clausewitz: The Neglected Dimensions of Counter-Strategic Thought,” in Beate Jahn (ed.), Classical Theory and International Relations: Critical Investigations (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2006); and Immanent War, Immaterial Terror, Culture Machine, Issue 7 (2005): Biopolitics (with Keith Farquhar). 91
JULIAN REID one which, once removed, leaves life in a condition of loss unto itself, and where it can encounter only the conditions for its own decadence. Thus is it that biopolitical modernity—in so far as it has been framed as a project dedicated to freeing life from war—has developed in violation of the constitutive conditions for a life lived well. 3 Construed, albeit in complexly different ways, as a project for the bringing of the war which informs life of all that which determines its wellness to an end—by declaring it over on account of having established the truth of life’s desire and fitness for peace—biopolitical modernity could proceed only on the basis of the most reactionary form of violence to life. Indeed such is the grand error of the account of life on which biopolitical modernity, in its many different negational forms, has been based. For what is life, ultimately, without that capacity for a destructive shedding of those elements to be found within it, which do not strengthen but only serve to threaten it, limiting it, snuffing it of all that is most instinctive of it? The violence done unto life—a violence on which biopolitical modernity has thrived—remains worthy of further exploration and critique. But these days we invoke the problematic of biopolitics in terms that are increasingly differentiated. Indeed we speak not just of biopolitics in the pejorative sense, through which we refer to the error of a violence that has been done to life on account of an erroneous understanding of what life is. But instead, and in the context of diagnosing the nature of that condition, we seek, now, an affirmative idiom of thought and expression for a politics that will constitute a different account of the necessary conditions for a life that might be lived well. One which, in its aspirations to make life live well, is capable of shedding its relations of subjection to regimes that would remove it of its capacity for war. Every regime of power entails its own particular account of who it is permitted to kill and how. An affirmative biopolitics is no different. It must also entail an account of how and what it needs to kill in order to make life live well. And so is it that in diagnosing the grand error on which biopolitical modernity has proceeded, which is to say the error through which we came to think that life could be lived well in simplistic accordance with a knowledge as to the truth of its will to peace, and in belief in the possibility of a renewed politics for the affirmation of life, so might we seek a restitution of an understanding of war as that which is the constitutive capacity for a life lived well. And so is it too that we might still want to read and return to Nietzsche for inspiration. 3 See Reid, The Biopolitics of the War on Terror. 92
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Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governme
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Contents Introduction: Foucault, Bi
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INTRODUCTION point, and we find res
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INTRODUCTION stantially new recepti
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INTRODUCTION the body politic, whic
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INTRODUCTION 3) Enlightenment and m
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INTRODUCTION at least in Cynicism,
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INTRODUCTION i.e. as a juridical pr
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INTRODUCTION undergoes instead a de
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INTRODUCTION unsure about how to ha
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INTRODUCTION economy, which displac
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INTRODUCTION The two main cases tha
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INTRODUCTION like a sign of bad fai
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INTRODUCTION them as residual and m
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INTRODUCTION munity, and individual
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INTRODUCTION contemporary subjectiv
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THOMAS LEMKE Over the last twenty y
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THOMAS LEMKE In this article I will
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Page 43 and 44: THOMAS LEMKE Programs, strategies,
Page 45 and 46: THOMAS LEMKE Thus it seems the focu
Page 47 and 48: THOMAS LEMKE social movements of hi
Page 49 and 50: THOMAS LEMKE The principal focus of
Page 51 and 52: THOMAS LEMKE However, there is anot
Page 53 and 54: THOMAS LEMKE narrative to be used f
Page 55 and 56: JOHANNA OKSALA not merely as an eco
Page 57 and 58: JOHANNA OKSALA Reagan and Thatcher
Page 59 and 60: JOHANNA OKSALA The market had been
Page 61 and 62: JOHANNA OKSALA This regime also imp
Page 63 and 64: JOHANNA OKSALA liberalism and neoli
Page 65 and 66: JOHANNA OKSALA discussion of neolib
Page 67 and 68: JOHANNA OKSALA game for self-intere
Page 69 and 70: JOHANNA OKSALA been given ad hoc in
Page 71 and 72: JOHANNA OKSALA the terms of the opp
Page 74 and 75: Biopolitical Life Catherine Mills A
Page 76 and 77: BIOPOLITICAL LIFE particular, the t
Page 78 and 79: BIOPOLITICAL LIFE recognises beatit
Page 80 and 81: BIOPOLITICAL LIFE heroic conditions
Page 82 and 83: BIOPOLITICAL LIFE Nazism, Esposito
Page 84 and 85: BIOPOLITICAL LIFE given environment
Page 86 and 87: BIOPOLITICAL LIFE complete vitalisa
Page 88 and 89: BIOPOLITICAL LIFE Foucault suggests
Page 90 and 91: BIOPOLITICAL LIFE that different so
Page 94 and 95: TOWARDS AN AFFIRMATIVE BIOPOLITICS
Page 106 and 107: Biopolitics of Scale: Architecture,
Page 108: BIOPOLITICS OF SCALE Hansen’s pro
Page 111 and 112: Image 2: Oskar Hansen, “Poland’
Page 113 and 114: Image 4: Oskar Hansen, “Western B
Page 115 and 116: Image 6: “Diagram of human relati
Page 117 and 118: ŁUKASZ STANEK scales as increasing
Page 119 and 120: ŁUKASZ STANEK unit, defined princi
Page 121 and 122: ŁUKASZ STANEK interrelationship wa
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Page 125 and 126: HELENA MATTSSON tecture as a set of
Page 127 and 128: HELENA MATTSSON materials and displ
Page 129 and 130: HELENA MATTSSON though they are not
Page 131 and 132: HELENA MATTSSON experiences: it was
Page 134 and 135: Neuropower: Is Resistance Fertile?
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NEUROPOWER: IS RESISTANCE FERTILE?
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NEUROPOWER: IS RESISTANCE FERTILE?
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Foucault and Lacan: Who is Master?
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FOUCAULT AND LACAN: WHO IS MASTER?
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Enunciation and Politics A Parallel
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ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS is no long
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ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS Parrhesia
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ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS risk of ta
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ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS These argu
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ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS That which
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ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS Logos and
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ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS other hand
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ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS Foucault t
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ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS cracy, sin
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ADEENA MEY Rancière: The distribut
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ADEENA MEY Foucault, namely that of
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ADEENA MEY different way of being.
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ADEENA MEY whom the affirmation of
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Roundtable Sven-Olov Wallenstein Bi
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ROUNDTABLE that engenders an immedi
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ROUNDTABLE on the relation between
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ROUNDTABLE self does that at certai
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ROUNDTABLE what could the referent
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ROUNDTABLE Vikki Bell I have to con
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ROUNDTABLE everything changes after
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ROUNDTABLE Johanna Oksala Thanks, J
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Authors Maurizio Lazzarato is socio
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AUTHORS Julian Reid has taught at t
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Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governmentality

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