Has biopolitics actually become thanatopolitics, a field of
study obsessed with death? Is there something about the nature of
biopolitical thought today that makes it impossible to deploy
affirmatively? If this is true, what can life-minded thinkers put
forward as the merits of biopolitical reflection? These questions
drive "Improper Life," Timothy C. Campbell's dexterous
inquiry-as-intervention.
Campbell argues that a "crypto-thanatopolitics" can be teased
out of Heidegger's critique of technology and that some of the
leading scholars of biopolitics--including Michel Foucault, Giorgio
Agamben, and Peter Sloterdijk--have been substantively influenced
by Heidegger's thought, particularly his reading of proper and
improper writing. In fact, Campbell shows how all of these
philosophers have pointed toward a tragic, thanatopolitical
destination as somehow an inevitable result of technology. But in
"Improper Life" he articulates a corrective biopolitics that can
begin with rereadings of Foucault (especially his late work
regarding the care and technologies of the self), Freud (notably
his writings on the drives and negation), and Gilles Deleuze
(particularly in the relation of attention to aesthetics).
Throughout "Improper Life," Campbell insists that biopolitics
can become more positive and productively asserts an affirmative
"technē" not thought through thanatos but rather practiced through
"bios."
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