The enigmatic nexus between sovereignty and biopolitics left opened by Foucault’s seminal work is the starting point of a reflection that has concerned Italian biopolitical thought over the last two decades. What marks the difference between Foucault’s notion of biopolitics and most recent theorizations? How should we envision resistance without proposing new metaphysical forms of salvation? How has the commodification of life transformed 20th and 21st century biopolitics? Is the “object” of biopolitics the symbolic life of the political body, bare-natural life, or the excess of its immanence?
To thematise the relationship between life and politics means to sit astride the wall that today separates history from nature, human from natural sciences, opening up the possibility of undermining the terms in which this relation has been articulated so far. What are “politics” and “life”? Are these two terms to be considered as originally distinct or intrinsically linked? What does it mean to develop a philosophy “no longer in opposition with the concept, or better the natural reality, of the bìos” (Esposito, 2011)? Does Italian biopolitical theory give a satisfactory account of the biological inscription of logos into bìos? And finally, does it allow us to think a post-metaphysical notion of subjectivity?
Starting off from these questions, the aim of the present conference is to foster a debate on biopolitics, which will be articulated at the intersection between Italian biopolitical theory and other theoretical approaches.
Speakers: Laura Bazzicalupo, Lorenzo Chiesa, Mladen Dolar, Roberto Esposito, Peter Klepec, Federico Luisetti, Boštjan Nedoh, Marco Piasentier, Jelica Šumi? Riha, Alvise Sforza Tarabochia, Davide Tarizzo, Alenka Zupan?i? Žerdin.
Organized by Boštjan Nedoh and Marco Piasentier.
More information: http://italianbiopoliticaltheory.wordpress.com