'Beyond Biopolitics constitutes a truly serious attempt to think about the unthinkable.' Guy Lancaster, Political Studies Review: 2014 VOL 12, 93. Beyond Biopolitics exposes the conceptual limits of critical biopolitical approaches to violence, war, and terror in the post-9/11-War on Terror era. This volume shows that such popular international political theories rely upon frames of representation that leave out of focus a series of extreme forms of gruesome violence that have no concern for the preservation of life, a crucial biopolitical theme. Debrix and Barder mobilize different concepts—horror, agonal sovereignty, the pulverization of the flesh, or the notion of an inhumanity-to-come—to shed light on past and present ghastly scenes and events of violence that seek to undo the very idea of humanity. To highlight the capacity of horror to be in excess of both violence and the meaning of humanity, Beyond Biopolitics provides a series of engagements with issues much debated in contemporary critical theoretical circles, in particular war and terror, the production of fear, states and spaces of exception, and alterity as enmity. This work will be of great interest to scholars of critical international relations theory, critical security studies and international relations.

This volume seeks to explore the relationship between violence (its quantity, its varied forms, and its daunting consequences) in the post-9/11-War on Terror era and the contemporary status of critical political theorizing.

Michel Foucault’s notion of “biopower” has been a highly fertile concept in recent theory, influencing thinkers worldwide across a variety of disciplines and concerns. In The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Foucault famously employed the term to describe “a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them.” With this volume, Vernon W. Cisney and Nicolae Morar bring together leading contemporary scholars to explore the many theoretical possibilities that the concept of biopower has enabled while at the same time pinpointing their most important shared resonances. Situating biopower as a radical alternative to traditional conceptions of power—what Foucault called “sovereign power”—the contributors examine a host of matters centered on life, the body, and the subject as a living citizen. Altogether, they pay testament to the lasting relevance of biopower in some of our most important contemporary debates on issues ranging from health care rights to immigration laws, HIV prevention discourse, genomics medicine, and many other topics.

"For several decades, the field of bioethics has played a dominant role in shaping the way society thinks about ethical problems related to developments in science, technology, and medicine. But its traditional emphases on, for example, doctor-patient relationships, informed consent, and individual autonomy have led the field to not be fully responsive to the challenges posed by new human biotechnologies such as assisted reproduction, human genetic enhancement, and DNA forensics. Beyond Bioethics provides a focused overview for students and others grappling with the profound social dilemmas posed by these developments. It brings together the work of cutting-edge thinkers from diverse fields of study and public engagement, all of them committed to a new perspective that is grounded in social justice and public interest values. The contributors to this volume seek to define an emerging field of scholarly, policy, and public concern: a new biopolitics."--Provided by publisher.

Theorizing the role of disabled subjects in global consumer culture and the emergence of alternative crip/queer subjectivities in film, fiction, media, and art

Infectious Liberty traces the origins of our contemporary concerns about public health, world population, climate change, global trade, and government regulation to a series of Romantic-era debates and their literary consequences. Through a series of careful readings, Robert Mitchell shows how a range of elements of modern literature, from character-systems to free indirect discourse, are closely intertwined with Romantic-era liberalism and biopolitics. Eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century theorists of liberalism such as Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus drew upon the new sciences of population to develop a liberal biopolitics that aimed to coordinate differences among individuals by means of the culling powers of the market. Infectious Liberty focuses on such authors as Mary Shelley and William Wordsworth, who drew upon the sciences of population to develop a biopolitics beyond liberalism. These authors attempted what Roberto Esposito describes as an “affirmative” biopolitics, which rejects the principle of establishing security by distinguishing between valued and unvalued lives, seeks to support even the most abject members of a population, and proposes new ways of living in common. Infectious Liberty expands our understandings of liberalism and biopolitics—and the relationship between them—while also helping us to understand better the ways creative literature facilitates the project of reimagining what the politics of life might consist of. Infectious Liberty is available from the publisher on an open-access basis.

The European Union (EU) Commission champions a 'migrant-centred' approach to border security and 'irregular' migration management: it claims not only to observe human rights, but also to use surveillance to enhance the humanitarian protection of 'endangered' lives on land and at sea. Yet research presented by Non-Governmental Organizations and 'irregular' migrants' own testimonies reveal systemic border violence, dehumanization in spaces of detention, and exposure to death via abandonment in hostile environments. This book turns to conceptual resources found in biopolitical theory in order to move diagnoses of Europe's border crisis beyond that of a 'gap' between the policy 'rhetoric' of humanitarianism and the 'reality' of 'irregular' migrants' embodied experiences. It argues that both 'positive' and 'negative' dimensions of EU border security are symptomatic of tensions within biopolitical techniques of government and what Roberto Esposito refers to as the paradigm of immunization. While bordering practices are designed to play a defensive role they contain the potential for excessive and often lethal security mechanisms that end up threatening the very values and lives they purport to protect. Each chapter draws on a different biopolitical key to identify and interrogate diverse technologies of power at a range of border sites. Must border security always result in dehumanization and death? Are humanitarian discourses sufficient for critiquing contemporary forms of border violence? Is a more affirmative approach to border politics possible? 'Europe's border crisis' addresses these pressing questions and advances new research agendas for critical border and migration studies beyond existing debates about 'control' versus 'escape'.