Original scientific paper
TRANSFORMATIONS OF BIOPOLITICS
Žarko Paić
; Faculty of Textile Technology, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
In this article the author analyses the transformations of the biopolitics concept from its initial introduction into political-science discussions through the organicist theory of the state to Foucault’s critical theory of the subject. In the contemporary debate of social-humanistic theorists, biopolitics delineates a wide area of biomedical, genetic and biotechnological changes of life structures. The addition of a new concept of life to the political sphere requires a redefinition of modern foundations of political construction of the community. The author critically analyses various theories of biopolitics, thus showing that the reception of Foucault’s take on biopolitics is a synthetic path toward overcoming the one-sidedness of naturalism/biologism and politicism in the understanding of life and politics in a global age. Biopolitics goes beyond its conceptual definition and becomes a first-rate problem of relations between human life and the way in which state regulates life in the global order of power ever since the traditional understanding of sovereignty and of natural and human rights ceased to be valid.
Keywords
biopolitics; life; power; totalitarianism; democracy
Hrčak ID:
41514
URI
Publication date:
9.10.2009.
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