Derrida Contra Agamben: Sovereignty, Biopower, History

Waiting for Justice: Benjamin and Derrida on Sovereignty and Immanence

WAITING BEFORE THE LAW IN KAFKA’S PARABLE “BEFORE THE LAW” WE SEE, quite famously, that the story’s protagonist (known only as “the man from the country”) is forced to wait before the gate of law for his whole life. The gatekeeper, whose only purpose seems to be to bar the man’s way, keeps him sitting on a stool just before the gate. As the man is dying from old age, he has this well-known exch...

Statistics and sovereignty: the workings of biopower in epidemiology

S ifting through recent public health literature, an urgent need and an intense enthusiasm for the opportunities of civil and vital registration become apparent (1Á3). Without intending to question the validity of the arguments calling for the improvement of civil registration in low-income countries, we want to take the opportunity to elucidate a critical perspective on registration-related is...

Dada Contra Art History

Biopower Today

In this article we undertake some conceptual clarification of the concepts of biopower and biopolitics, and argue for their utility in contemporary analysis. We consider Foucault’s development of these concepts, and differentiate his view, which is close to ours, from the philosophical take-up of the terms by Giorgio Agamben and Antonio Negri. Biopower, we suggest, entails one or more truth dis...

Neo-eugenics: A Feminist Critique of Agamben

IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POVERTY POLICY, the welfare mother is exposed to harsh treatment that is designed to maintain her participation in the low-wage labor force and, arguably, to discipline wage labor as a whole by restricting the alternatives to wage earning. I would contend that she is also being subjected to an extraordinarily invasive form of sexual regulation, ranging from teen pregnan...