Versions of biopolitics/Versions of Foucault

On the occasion of the new book, Humans, animals and biopolitics: the more-than-human condition, the Little Tools Project organizes the workshop "Versions of biopolitics/Versions of Foucault".

Is there still life to the biopolitics of Michel Foucault?

This workshop springs from an intention to reformulate and reinvigorate Michel Foucault's notion of biopolitics. The workshop will present and discuss different 'new' versions of biopolitics that expand their scope beyond the human species to include non-humans in their understanding of the governance of life. In the workshop, we want to consider if and how these different versions may enable readings of Foucault that shift toward a more empirically open version of biopolitics – that is, so to speak, less ‘disciplined’. In the workshop, we will discuss whether such a shift might open space for a more lively and unruly politics of life.

The venture will take its point of departure in considerations and investigations of how human and non-human animal lives intersect. The occasion for the seminar is the release of the volume 'Humans, Animals and Biopolitics' – the more than human condition’ (Asdal, Druglitrø, Hinchliffe (eds.) Routledge 2016) which intervenes and engages with the above topic and offer a series of contributions which in different ways consider how, for instance, farmed fish, flu-infected birds, nomadic camels and enviro-pigs add to the political collectives they enter. 

In the workshop, Prof. Dr. Thomas Lemke, Prof. Stephen Hinchliffe and Dr. Martina Schlünder will each comment on the theme, whereafter an open discussion will follow.

In his work as Professor of Sociology with focus on biotechnologies, nature and society at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Thomas Lemke has worked on Michel Foucault's relation to the 'material turn' in philosophy and sociology.

Steve Hinchliffe, who is Professor in Human Geography in the College of Life and Environmental Science at the University of Exeter, has written on human-nonhuman relations and movements of infectious diseases.

Martina Schlünder is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Technoscience Research Unit at University of Toronto, Canada. Among her publications are Becoming Bone Sheep and Wissens-Hunger im Stall: Die Entstehung von Knochen-Schafen als Versuchstiere in der Unfallchirurgie

We hope the workshop will be of relevance for people with interest in Science and Technology Studies, human-animal relations, or people more broadly interested in foucaldian scholarship.

We will arrange for a snack and a drink at the end of the workshop. Because of this, please tell us if you plan to attend: a.g.jorgensen@tik.uio.no

Organizer

Little Tools
Published Sep. 23, 2016 3:04 PM - Last modified Nov. 23, 2016 10:24 AM