Praktyka Teoretyczna (Jan 2011)
On Life, Bodies and Matter – (e Limits of Bio- politics. Introduction
Abstract
Qe primary aim of this paper is to analysethe limits of biopolitics (both in the strict, spatial-material sense and from the historical point of view).Qe discussion will focus only on the conditions ofgiving an answear to the title question and on theconcept of biopolitics.Qe way Foucault writes history is itself enough tounderstand the genesis and status of biopolitics.Foucault’s method – here reconstructed on the basis ofhis lectures from the seventies – consists of a progressiveexposure of posisitive forces hidden behind everyphenomenon. Every object, every historical event isconstituted in a constellation of forces that function asits genetic elements. Qese powers themselves are bornearlier, usually separately, in abstraction. If they are totake shape, to be realised, they must become related.At the same time, their prior abstractness becomesvisible only from the perspective of their *nal form.A similar view on history one can *nd in Marx’swritings: the historiography always consists of searchingfor genetic elements, powers that constitute a givenphenomenon.Foucault writes the history of realisation diUerently.Qe realisation for him is a principle of transformation.Qe becoming of a concrete is also the becoming ofbiopolitics.
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