Biopolitics, ethics and subjectivation

Yuan-Horng Chu, Joyce C.H. Liu, Rada Iveković, Alain Brossat

Description

This collective book proposes to re-examine and explore the paradox of modernity through the triad structure of biopolitics, ethics and subjectivation, as it has served as an effective analytic tool for Western cultures (Foucault, Agamben, Negri...). The authors ask themselves if this framework can be tested on as varied cultural conditions as those in Asia, South Asia, Africa, Latin America or Eastern Europe.

Sujets

• Esthétique
• Philosophie
• Science politique
• ARts
• Politique

Informations

• Publié par: L'Harmattan
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 36
• EAN13: 9782296805002
• Langue: Français
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 17 Mo

Extrait

Biopolitics, Ethics and Subjectivation
© L’Harmattan, 2011
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ISBN : 978-2-296-54545-8
EAN : 9782296545458

Fabrication numérique : Actissia Services, 2012
A book edited by
Alain Brossat, Yuan-Horng Chu, Rada Ivekovi ć ,
Joyce C.H. Liu


Biopolitics, Ethics and Subjectivation


L’Harmattan
Introduction
Joyce C.H. Liu


This volume is the result of the international conference and summer school on Biopolitics, Ethics and Subjectivation: Questions on Modernity held in June 2009, co-organized by the Graduate Institute for Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, and the Department of Philosophy, University Paris-8, France. The spirit behind these co-operation has been stated very well by Alain Brossat, the founder of the society Ici et ailleurs , in his statement regarding Ici et ailleurs : here and elsewhere. We organize these events for researchers and graduate students from different countries to meet in a five-day workshop, with diverse historical and cultural backgrounds, different fields of specialties, and varied scholarly training. Each time, the focused problematic brings us together to exchange our thoughts, to deliberate our papers and to communicate, to dialogue and to understand. The 2009 conference is the 3 rd conference and summer school co-sponsored by SRCS of Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, and the Department of Philosophy, University Paris-8, France since 2005. The first one is Polemos, Stasis: An International Symposium, held in Yilan, Taiwan, June 2005. The second one is Culture & Politics , held in Chilhac, France, September 2007.

The theme of Biopolitics, Ethics and Subjectivation: Questions on Modernity is deliberately selected in order to problematize the question of biopolitics, the genealogy of ethics, and the subjectivation raised by Michel Foucault. The Foucaultian assumption concerning the difference of the pastoral power in Christian society and the Confucianism in Fast Eastern societies was radically questioned. Situated in Taiwan, an island with complex colonial histories, mixed with traditional Chinese/Taiwanese/Japanese cultures, and with rapidly globalized commercial market and increasing number of immigrant workers, the 2009 conference was organized to encourage contributions, discussions and debates not merely on the European conditions but more on the Fast Eastern spheres, the post-colonial situations and the global-capitalist contemporary.

The papers in this volume raised questions such as whether the theoretical framework on the question of biopolitics, ethics, and subjectivation elaborated by contemporary European thinkers be transported and re-examined in a different context, such as the East Asian countries. What differences and what varieties could be observed? Whether the Confucian tradition serve as an alternative for the subjectivation or as a more severe disciplinary order? The project of modernity in East Asian countries, was closely inter-related. It is obvious that Western epistemological apparatus has penetrated and permeated East Asian countries, starting from the mid-18 th century and throughout the 20 th century. Western concepts, such as citizen, subject, nation, people, sovereignty, international law, along with different forms of new knowledge, were introduced into the Chinese-using spheres, including, Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan. There new concepts were coated with traditional Chinese or Japanese phraseology, but endowed with modern rationality and national justification. We need to ask: was there a particular alternative mode of the East Asian Modernity, or was the Asian world-view altered by the West? How did the triad term of biopolitic, ethics and subjectivation take shape? Through what cultural institutions and historical processes, with what specificities?In the long and varied processes of translations, was it a total transplantation or was it resistance with modification? Along with this line of thinking, can we further ask whether the revival of Confucianism be a complicit force in disguise for the expansion of the nationalist and global cognitive capitalism? Could we raise questions against the contemporary power alliance in the Asian world that is still the follow-up of the project of modernity?
Chapter I Foucault, Bio-politics and Governmentality
In a text called « the analytic philosophy of politics », a lecture he gave in Japan, in 1978, Foucault considered his own position as a philosopher or, more generally, as a "public speaker" in its very relativity to other situations, to other conditions – other stating-conditions. As he evokes the question of prisons, of the prison system – a question he has been dealing with at great length during the previous years – he takes into consideration the stake of relativity (or, if we prefer, "de-centring") by saying this: having visited two prisons in the region of Fukoka, he has "taken notice that the problem of penalty, of delinquency, of jail has to be identified, in your society [meaning in Japan] in very different terms as in ours [meaning Western or French society]". For this reason, he adds, he has given up his project to present a lecture about the "specific problem of prisons". For what he would have to say on this issue would be solely related to the European context in which it was worked out and he would risk to fail in transposing it into these quite "different" conditions.
For this reason, Foucault has decided to transform his lecture into a rather risky exercise: the examination of the "question of power", the presentation of some proposals and concepts related to an analysis of politics under the condition of their reference (submission) to the "test" of the heterogeneous, of the different, of the discontinuous – specifically the "test" of a differentiation/opposition between "West" ("Europe", "our societies", "in our countries", "Western countries"…) and "Far East" (Japan", "Far Eastern societies"…).
So, the issues, the analysis, the concepts he is going to present in his lecture are constantly not only linked to, but depending on this reservation or general condition : it is a "story" of the West which is "narrated" here according to a style or a mode which is characteristic of philosophy; if this "story" can have a value for a Far Eastern public, if this public can spot in it paradigmas or receive stimulations from it, it is obvious that these "operations" will not take the form of simple transpositions, but rather rely on the examinations of variances, distances, differences or even contrasts. In such a context, the critical thinker has not so much to implement "strong" concepts or analytic proposals whose universality would stand out quite naturally ; he has to practice the art to make "singularities" surge up – specific objects or topographies which have to be connected together or compared.
So, having mentioned the "great illnesses" of power in the XXth century and in the West, fascism and stalinism, having shown how, in the West again, philosophy was brought to form a close bond with the State’s fate, having stridden along the history of the pastoral power, notably in its relation to Christianity, Foucault sketches out the programme of a comparative research: "It would be worthwhile to compare pastorate, pastoral power in Christian societies with what was the role and the effects of Confucianism in Far Eastern societies". Drawing up the general outline of such a research, he adds : "One should make the difference [my emphasis, AB] between pastoral power and Confucianism: the pastorate is mainly religious, Confucianism isn’t; pastorate aims at a goal which is in the hereafter and has a role to play here below only in relation with this hereafter, while Confucianism plays mainly an earthly role; Confucianism aims at a general stability of the social body, implemented by a set of general rules which become imperative for each individual; the pastorate, by contrast, sets up individualized relations of obedience between the pastor and his flock…" What matters here is not the more or less fragile character of the comparison brought up by Foucault. What obviously matters is the inclusion in his research field of the dimension of relativity, the implementation, inplicitly or explicitely, of such notions as difference, heterogeneity, "singularity", discontinuity – notions which make way for a special attention to cultural differences, cultural dissent or dispute.
All the texts which have been put together in this part of the book elaborate the issue Foucault is dealing with in the lecture he gave in Tokyo, in April 1978. Each author handles the subject according to his own interests, fields of research and references, but each of these short essays draws us back to the question raised by Foucault: how to incorporate the factor of cultural heterogeneity in our discourse, in our theoretical devices?
Alain Brossat
Power over Life/Power of Life: What is a Non-organizational Politics? Pheng Cheah
Modernity is the era of bio-power, the age of the political control over life. The most provocative contribution of Foucault’s and Deleuze’s thought to political philosophy is the attempt to articulate a power of life that evades the power over life. Insofar as bio-power involves the political organization of life