Society for the Study of Bio-political Futures

451 Pages·2013·2.76 MB·English

LIFE IN-BETWEEN-OUTSIDE
DISCIPLINE AND CONTROL
Writings for the proceedings of the inaugural meeting
of the
Society for the Study of Bio-political Futures
April 5 – 6, 2013
Syracuse University Humanities Center
Syracuse, New York
Statement of Proceedings
The following collection of readings have been assembled in this e-book format for the proceedings of the first
meeting of the Society for the Study of Biopolitical Futures, which will take place at the Syracuse University
Humanities Center between April 5th and 6th, 2013. Invited participants were asked to submit two examples of their
research on the concept of the Biopolitical or biopower: an example of an earlier approach from their published
writings, and something that represents more recent reflections or thinking. The goal of the two day meeting in
Syracuse will have been to assemble some of the most significant researchers on the intersections of the concept with
new areas of inquiry in order to "work the problematique," that is to say, first, to clarify and explain the wildly
different uses made of the original concepts drawn from Foucault's early work on populations and governmentality,
and second, to recognize and explore the paradigmatic function that this concept has played over the past ten year in
linking several different disciplinary knowledges to a common analysis of what signifies power today.
—Gregg Lambert, Founding Director
The readings collected here have been compiled from copyrighted sources, which are the respective property of their
holders. As a member of the Society for the Study of Bio-Political Futures and participant in the conference “Life: In-
Between-Outside Discipline and Control,” this e-book may be downloaded for your personal use only. The contents of
this e-book must not be used for commercial purposes or gain. In addition, please do not distribute or share this e-
book version. Citation of any portion of unpublished work collected here only by permission of individual authors.
Schedule of Proceedings

Life In-Between-Outside
Discipline and Control
The First Meeting of the Society for the Study of Biopolitical Futures
Syracuse University Humanities Center
Thursday, April 4
7:00pm, Dinner & Drinks at b/c, Fayette St. (three blocks from hotel on map).
—Gregg Lambert will meet participants in lobby of Jefferson Clinton Hotel at 6pm.
Another group will be escorted at 6:30pm by HC staff.
Friday, April 5
9—Opening Remarks & Introduction, Gregg Lambert
9:30-11:30—Session One: “biopower,” “biopolitics”
Tim Campbell
Jeffrey Nealon
Paul Patton
1:30-3:30: Session Two: “Life”
Peter Canning
Patricia Clough
Rich Doyle
Adam Nocek
3:30-5:30: Session Three: … In-…
Brad Evans
Meera Lee
Greg Thomas
Cary Wolfe
6:00—Drinks & Dinner at GFAC
Saturday, April 6
9:00-11:00 Session Four: -Between-…

Irving Goh
Gail Hamner
Kalpana Sheshadri
David Wills
1:00-3:00—Session Five: … -Outside…
Claire Colebrook
Tim Murray
Jackie Orr
3:00-5:00-- …”Discipline” and “Control”
Frida Beckman
Gregory Flaxman
Gregg Lambert
5:00-5:30—Closing Discussion
5:30 --Closing Reception in Tolley Library
Acknowledgements
MI DITMAR
EDITORIAL AND PRODUCTION COORDINATOR
M.F.A MELLON COORDINATOR
&
BEN LAMBERT
DESIGNER AND DEVELOPER
[email protected]
The Central New York Humanities Corridor, generously supported
by an award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Preface
Gregg Lambert
Re: The Establishment of the “Society for the Study of Bio-political Futures”
I. Prospectus for the Research Group:
The initial idea and the particular composition of this Research Society was inspired—very loosely—on the
establishment and activities of the College of Sociology between 1937-1939. The College took as its “precise object of
contemplative activity,” according to the collective statement by its members[1] “the name of Sacred Sociology,
implying the study of all manifestations of social existence where the active presence of the sacred is clear,
determining the coincidence between the fundamental obsessive tendencies of individual psychology and the principal
structures that govern social organization and are in command of its revolutions.”
Today, if there is any name that could serve to replace the sociological and anthropological notion of the
“sacred,” it is the current names of “bio-power,” and the “bio-political.” This association has both interesting and
problematic consequences, which will be the subject of the Society’s collective research. As an analytical or
theoretical term, strictly speaking, the concept of bio-power has presented the same problems of definition,
clarification of the social relations of power, which is caused by a “quasi-mythic” or “epochal” significance attached to
the primary term of analysis. Simply stated, the analysis of power may not be served best by a concept that has itself
required so much explanation.
As a concept that actually emerged over ten years ago, a generalized notion of the bio-political, which has
been applied to often incompatible theoretical domains ranging from the discourse of human rights to aspirations of
post-human agency, has been responsible for generating a lot of “Discourse” (in Foucault’s sense, with all the
ramifications this implies), as well as for suturing different fields of disciplinary inquiry together under what could be
called a dominant “hermeneutic paradigm.”
In keeping with this function, the concepts of “bio-power” and the “bio-political” have also functioned as
“theoretical stocks” in the reproduction and circulation of academic discourse and new investment strategies defined
both in symbolic terms and in terms of the creation of new subjects of “human capital.” It is partly for this reason (and
partly influenced by the patois of my friend, Jeffrey T. Nealon) that I have selected the phrase “Bio-political Futures”
in referring to both aspects in the production and the reproduction of different fields of inquiry, as if to unite them
under a single rubric and a common theme, which is the analysis of power. Certainly, no one intended this to happen,
and it appears somewhat ironic to observe in the sense that a single concept has emerged in the space vacated by the
decline of theories based on the primacy of Structure and Sign, and today even constitutes a common space of analysis
across the Humanities and the Social Sciences.
More recently, however, given the announcement of emergent trends, and judging only from hearsay, there are
signs of new strategies that will determine the fate of these theoretical stocks, perhaps even precipitating a period of
“selling off,” which has we know can be just as productive form of investment and is likely to stimulate the
production of new discourse for many years to come. Of course, this is not just a problem of speculation that exists in
the pure space of discourse alone, but a problem of research that touches on the past and current projects of everyone
who has been invited to participate in this Society, since we have all contributed to the above trends in our own
projects, if not, in some cases, been among the most creative innovators.
I am not proposing that we gather together as a theory collective with an objective of inventing “what comes
next’; neither am I proposing that we construct a survey or “History of Bio-power,” though this could certainly be an
individual research project conducted by one of the members. What I am proposing is that use this moment as a unique
opportunity to come together as “a finite community of researchers” for an equally finite period of time (no more than
2 years, 2013-2014) to construct the collective analysis of a problem that is dispersed throughout our own individual
research and writing projects. It is in this sense of a “community of researchers,” or a Society, finally, that I have taken
as my inspiration the establishment of the College between the years 1937-1939, which Denis Hollier describes in the
following manner: “The College did not last, nor can it be summed up-except as a chorus that is not in unison, the
soloists too numerous and their voices too distinct, without unanimity. It had no first person.”
Gregg Lambert
August 23rd 2012
[1] The original members of the College were, of course, GEORGES AMBROSINO , GEORGES B ATAILLE, ROGER CAILLOIS , PIERRE
KLOSSOWSKI ,PIERRE LIBRA , JULES MONNEROT
Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Statement of Proceedings
Acknowledgements
Preface
I • Beckman
A Labor of Pleasure: In Time for the Politics of Control
Extracts from Between Desire and Pleasure: A Deleuzian Theory of Sexuality
II • Campbell
Gratitude and Mythic Violence: The Biopolitics of Reciprocity
Genres of the Political: The Impolitical Comedy of Conflict
III • Canning
The Clinic of Control
Whitehead’s Involution of an Outside Chance (‘That what cannot be – yet is’)
IV • Clough
War By Other Means: What Difference Do(es) the Graphic(s) Make?
The Digital, Labor and Measure Beyond Biopolitics
V • Colebrook
The Death of the PostHuman: Essays on Extinction, Volume One.
Recent article in LRB on the naturalist pragmatism of Philip Kitcher Amia
VI • Doyle
Glimpsing the Peacock Angel
“Taking Psychedelics Literally: Spiritual Evolution Beyond the Narrative Mind”
VII • Evans
Fascism & the Bio-Political
Dangerously Exposed: The Life & Death of the Resilient Subject1
VIII • Flaxman
The Untimely (or, Utopia)
The Unfinished Business of Control
IX • Goh
Becoming-Animal Transversal Politics
“Autrement souverain,” or Sovereign Otherwise
X • Hamner
Film at the intersection of Religion and Power
XI • Lambert
How ‘Power Makes Us See and Speak’
Some Notes Towards an Investigation of "Control Society"1
XII • Lee
Our Subversion of Sorrow: Shamanistic Possession, Emotional Occupation
Monstrosity and Humanity in Bong Joon-ho’s The Host
XIII • Murray
Artistic Simulacra in the Age of Recombinant Bodies1
Networked Fantasy of the Open: From Alternative Video to Tactical Media*
XIV • Nealon
“The Archaeology of Biopower: From Plants to Animals in The Order of Things”
Once More, with Intensity: Foucault’s History of Power Revisited
XV • Nocek
Immunizing Life: Biopolitics and Thought’s Depopulation
Biochemical Architecture and the Pragmatics of Life
XVI • Orr
Panic Diaries: A Genealogy of Panic Disorder
Slow Disaster at the Digital Edge
XVII • Patton
Life, Legitimation and Government
From Resistance to Government: Foucault’s Lectures 1976-1979
XVIII • Seshadri
Language and Silence
Life: The Final Frontier
XIX • Thomas
The Erotics of 'Under/Development' in Walter Rodney: On Sexual or Body Politics and Political Economics - for
'Guerilla Intellectualism'
George Jackson-Ambushing-in Swamp Man
XX • Wills
Positive Feedback: Towards an Ecology of Sound
Raw War: Technotropological Effects of a Divided Front
XXI • Wolfe
Before the Law
Bibliography