Laura Bazzicalupo

The Representation of the Other in Biopolitical Devices

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Abstract

The essay focuses on the representation of the other in practices of biopolitical government, in a perspective of political philosophy. Biopolitical representation and classification concern naturalization of human beings. Biopolitics is a management of living men through a definition of human nature, that - in a no-expicitly political way - makes possible to evaluate, select and reject in a no-human status pathological beings who threaten life itself. This biopolitical representation of the other has ambivalent effects: others are naturalizated, racialised, and reduced to organic and bare life: on the other hand they undergo a selective evaluation supported by economic , bio-racial and extra-legal criteria, imposed by an expert knowledge aimed to increasing capabilities. Biopolitical exclusion, that emerges in Agamben's thought, obscures how racialisation can also support political strategic identities as Spivak shows. Postcolonial governmentality studies highlight interesting (although problematic) subjectivizations, which are no-identity and use welfare-legal identifications in a pragmatic way. In western area instead, neoliberal governmentality provides forms of selective inclusivity, with always new and unpredictable evaluation's thresholds that make stable political subjects very difficult.

Keywords

  • biopolitics
  • racialisation
  • governmentality
  • exclusion
  • inclusion

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