How do humans fit into the natural world? What are the political consequences of viewing humans as animals? On Biopolitics is the first scholarly attempt to answer these questions, bringing critical thought into dialogue with naturalism.
Effectively demonstrating that biology cannot serve as a measure of societies and that a critical theory cannot ignore the scientific worldview, Marco Piasentier explores two dominant strands of biopolitical theory that interpret nature in opposing ways. The first one reduces every notion of the natural world to a historical invention produced by mechanisms of power, thereby preventing the conceptualisation of humans as animals. The second strand turns nature into a normative principle from which to derive a politics of life itself. Piasentier suggests that it is possible to envision a different biopolitical theory, in which humans are political animals, free from any natural imperative. To this end, he introduces Darwinian naturalism into biopolitical theory, engaging with contemporary debates in the philosophy of science about biological teleology and normativity. Rather than reducing the Darwinian worldview to a historic-political invention, he challenges the anthropomorphic residues that continue to inform it and serve as grounds for normative forms of biopolitics.
On Biopolitics sets a new foundation for biopolitical theory and will become essential reading for humanities and social sciences scholars seeking a new perspective on nature, beyond any form of biologism or linguistic idealism.
Introduction: Vestiges of Anthropomorphism
1. The Command of Language
2. Is the Human Being a Living Creature?
3. The Death of Bartleby and the Paradise of Language
4. Erring According to Nature
5. The Blowing of the Wind and Natural Selection
6. The Ends of Nature
Biography
Marco Piasentier is a Research Fellow at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and at the Centre for Critical Thought, University of Kent, UK.
'What is the specific threshold between language and life? And how does modern biopolitics re-inscribe this threshold in multiple ambiguous relations to the traditional concept and contemporary scientific discourses of the "human"? In On Biopolitics: An Inquiry into Nature and Language, Marco Piasentier develops a groundbreaking critical analysis of these questions in close dialogue with contemporary and recent philosophy, including Agamben, Foucault, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Dennett. While central positions of recent philosophy have rejected Aristotle's understanding of the human being as the animal having language by invoking a radically non-biological understanding of linguistic life, Piasentier argues that this strategy nevertheless exhibits a residual anthropocentrism that fails to reckon with the deep ethical and political problems inscribed within contemporary claims to biopolitical normativity and power. By contrast, a close examination of the problems of explanation in contemporary evolutionary theory exposes the possibility of a new conception of biological normativity and purpose capable of unsettling the privilege of these claims and their power over our self- understanding. In the far-ranging and insightful analysis, Piasentier rises to the contemporary challenge of thinking a linguistic life that is without any end beyond itself.'
Paul Livingston, Professor of Philosophy, University of New Mexico
'An exceptional book that employs the notion of biopolitics in order to address the most pressing problem in European philosophy today: the relation between the natural sciences and the human sciences, the naturalistic and the transcendental, an opposition which here undergoes an expert deconstruction, with far-reaching consequences for our conception of the human being, the contemporary political situation, and the future of both.'
Michael Lewis, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
'Piasentier's book studies the ontological assumptions hidden behind some influential conceptions of nature and language, with an eye to the effects they have on the field of political theory. He uses a variety of thinkers across different traditions of thought. The result is a thoughtful and original analysis that questions many of our philosophical certainties.'
Davide Tarizzo, Professor of Philosphy, University of Salerno
'In this searching analysis, Piasentier shows how biopolitics must expose the discursive construction of life without deifying meaning, just as it must uncover the forces animating discourse without mythologizing life. By bringing post-Nietzschean critical theory into dialogue with post-Darwinian naturalism, Piasentier's work opens up the prospect of a critical naturalism.'
Ray Brassier, Professor of Philosophy, American University of Beirut
'[On Biopolitics] shows the theoretical productivity of a philosophical exercise that, departing from the inexhaustible commentary on canonical texts, opens itself to dialogue and contamination with the sciences. Furthermore, and this seems to be a point of great relevance, it offers a contribution to think about human existence outside of any normativity inferred from a supposed natural design.'
Italian Thought Network
'[Piasentier] succeeds in his ambitious aim of instantiating a path towards the co- articulation of biological science and critical philosophy.'
Matthew Collins, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
'Piasentier’s work departs both methodologically and in terms of content from the dominant debates in the field of biopolitics, attempting with his specific approach to address what he identifies as one of the main shortcomings of the biopolitical debate.'
Vesna Liponik, Filozofski Vestnik
