New paper sent: Biopolitics, Deleuze, and a new Contemporary view

Finally, today we have sent a new paper to the "Pléyade" journal to its monographic about biopolitics. We present a different conceptualization about biopolitics, based on some Deleuzian concepts (we pointed out about them here). If the paper is accepted, it will be published on summer 2016. Until then, you can read the abstract (english and spanish) here:

Since Michel Foucault started to use the notion of biopolitics in the decade of the seventies, this has acquired a key relevance in Social Sciences and has been applied to the analysis of a big number of phenomena which transform directly our daily life. This paper rethinks the mentioned notion thanks to the proposals of Gilles Deleuze about the work of Michel Foucault. To do this, first, we examine how the former analysed the notion of power offered by the latter.  Next, we revise the work of several authors that have transformed the meaning of biopolitics. Specifically, we comment the proposals of Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose, on the one hand, and the ideas of Andrew Donaldson and Lyle Fearnley, on the other. Third, we present our research based on a case study about the discourses and practises on biosecurity currently deployed by the European Union. Through this work we reread the relation infection-surveillance and put forward the idea of “syndromic observation” as a new dispositive to manage life that would be replacing the notion of biopolitics.

Desde que Michel Foucault utilizó la noción de biopolítica en la década de los setenta, su uso se ha extendido por todas las Ciencias Sociales y se ha aplicado al análisis de un amplio rango de fenómenos que impactan directamente en nuestra vida cotidiana. Este artículo reformula la mencionada noción recurriendo a las propuestas que Gilles Deleuze realizó sobre la obra de Michel Foucault. Para ello, en primer lugar se revisa cómo el primer autor analizó la noción de poder ofrecida por el segundo. A continuación, se hace un análisis de los trabajos que recientemente han transformado la noción de biopolítica. Concretamente, se examinan las propuestas de Paul Rabinow y Nikolas Rose, por un lado, y las de Andrew Donaldson y Lyle Fearnley, por otro. En tercer lugar, se presenta un estudio de caso centrado en los discursos y prácticas sobre bioseguridad que está implementando la Unión Europea. A partir de esa investigación se ofrece una reconceptualización del binomio infección-vigilancia y se plantea la noción de “observación sindrómica” como dispositivo reciente sobre la gestión de la vida que ocupa el lugar explicativo que ofrece la idea de biopolítica.

Photo Credit: Jef Safi

Special Christmas Seminary: Biopolitics at University of Almería

Last friday, one of our POBICS members was invited to celebrate a seminary at the University of Almería (South of Spain). This seminary was focused to degree's student, but some senior lecturers assisted too. 

The topic was about biopolitics, and it was focused in the Foucaultian vision. We read the last chapter of "Society Must be Defended" in fact. We prepared some topics or key points in order to begin the seminary, all of them around one question: How can we accept Foucault's premises in their original mean currently? As Rabinow, Rose and other have commented, our society has changed a lot since Foucault was dead, and we have to keep in mind all of these changes (i.e. Chernobyl, the fall of the Berlin' Wall, GMO food, advances in genetics and DNA, bioterrorism, 11-S, anthrax attacks, etc.).

With this points, both students and profesors asked with really interesting ideas about our main purpose. Here some of them:

-Internet as the real revolution in our era.

-Although it could be most easy to think, we must think power as a grid, and not as a focus in hands of a Sovereign.

-We live in a constant state of Emergency, and it has two posible conceptions: a) State of Emergency as a each time more frequent state where we are managed and controlled and b) State of Emergency as a the only place we can scape and live as a nomad without being captured by the State Apparatus (see Deleuze).

-How can we conceive a positive meaning of power (as if power makes us to act and not to punish).

These ideas was the central element in our discussion. We pointed out some ideas about Agamben, especially with the State of Emergency. We also talked about the Rabinow's work when he uses some foucaultian ideas in order to "refresh" it. 

And that's all for now. From POBICS, we wish you a so merry Christhmas!!

Photo Credit: Kamil Porembinski

Next paper: Scabies, Fear and Refugees in Germany

As we posted a month ago, we are about to publish several papers at the beginning of2016. One of them is very interesting due to the topic' relevance: the wave of refugees and the controversy given in the european politics and management. 

Because of it, we thought it can be quite important to analyse some news and events where refugees and bios were linked. In that sense, thanking to Swen (our german member), we could write this paper where this work is explained. In this post we will offer some key ideas in order to discuss and to know your opinion:

In the first place, we offer our basic hypothesis and we suggest the relationship between fear ( and other afections too ), and foreigness. Pandemics and the bios, as you will read, is a key element in this relationship due to the afections produced by "the other unknown".

In a second moment, we present the phenomenon as it is being lived in Germany. We present the " Myths of Hygiene " in fictional imaginaries but also in the West History. This point is important because it shows that fear and hygiene is not a new binomium, but a rooted think in our societies.

After this, we present emotions in the view we need them. Those emotions are related with the hygienics myth. Hygienics is enacted as a dispositiff that promote some very concrete emotions, and this occurs not only with scabies in the current wave of refugees, but also it have ocurred other times like the last ebola outbreak or about bioterrorism.

We don't want to show here the whole paper. We want to finalize with these sentence, gathered in this work:

"…Such as the issue of hygiene e.g. I mean I clean my toilet at home. So why should they not self-organise cleaning their toilets as well?”

Thomas de Maziere, German Minister for Internal Affairs.

Photo Credit: Geralt.

POBICS is in a new Webpage! TECSAL page

From a couple of weeks, POBICS has been integrated in a new web. This new place is a shared-page between CO-DIS and POBICS. CO-DIS is the other research group which aim is to analise STS on the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Their goals is related with health, robotics and childhoold. You can check more about them here.

The URL of this new web is: https://tecsal.wordpress.com/  and there you can check our joint activity as a "big" research group, because POBICS and CO-DIS usually do knowledge exchange, big seminaries, support each other, etc.

This does not means that our normal POBICS web does not exists any more. POBICS will have its webpage as always (http://pobics.wix.com/pobics)

In this web, you can also to put in touch with us and to check our social networks, the results of our co-managed works, our permanent staff, etc.

We think the best you can do is take a look at it directly!

Photo Credit: TECSAL (CO-DIS and POBICS) web.

EASST Congress. Call for abstracts!

As we have posted a couple of weeks ago, next summer will take place in Barcelona the  big congress about STS. POBICS will be convinor in one of the tracks, and we are looking for researchers that want to participate. The track is pleasant to receive all kind of material, so this is not a normal congress. The track' name is: " Biorisk Intelligence otherwise: Scenarios, Visual Knowledge and new Mechanisms of Surveillance". Here the whole info.:

CfP 4S/EASST 2016 Conference in Barcelona 2016

Track Title: Biorisk Intelligence otherwise: Scenarios, Visual Knowledge and new Mechanisms of Surveillance 

The outbreaks of Ebola and Avian Flu have shown that epidemics as socio-material phenomena have undergone crucial changes. Simultaneously the way we gain, use and reinvest knowledge about such epidemics has changed. Within this context especially the transformations of technologies of epidemiology and preventive medicine are mentionable. Furthermore, the typical statistics-based risk analysis has become replaced by different practices and discourses that we can trace in three dimensions: 

a) First, the relation between knowledge production and fictional scenarios has become redefined. Risk analysis appears rather as a product than as a starting point for the development of knowledge and strategies with respect to epidemics.

b) Second, there is massive production of images that relate different actors on different levels and link different scales of epidemics. 

c) Third, new technologies such as smartphone apps or computer software facilitate the registering of cases of contagion in real-time and allow to track in a visual format the different fluxes of illnesses. 

Interrelated, new practices of biosurveillance, for instance, syndromic surveillance, have become fashionable in the biomedical world. Such new forms of surveillance do not only allow to register symptoms of a disease or to track the movement of sick population or individuals; instead, it is now possible to collect information about signals of anormality that are assembled in big syndromes and not in real diseases. 

These changes might point at a deeper transformation of power and the rise of a new intelligence related with a new form of governing society through biorisk and future threats that needs to be discussed. 

We invite people (scholars, writers, artists, designers, programmers, developers, etc.) from all kinds of disciplines and disciplinary backgrounds to apply for the presentation of their relevant papers, videos, animations, posters, artworks in which they discuss, critically question or engage with this epistemic field that has been opened up by these latest transformations, if possible by taking into account an STS perspective

Looking forward to your proposals. Contact and abstracts to. portraitsbioscontemporary@gmail.com

More info at the official Congress webpage: http://www.sts2016bcn.org/

Photo Credit: darwin Bell

Michel Serres report: The Natural Contract & Atlas

Today we have made our weekly meeting, in this case in order to discuss about two of the most interesting books in the Michel Serres life: The Natural Contract and Atlas. Here the report about the two ones:

THE NATURAL CONTRACT:

Serres: the Mediation' philosopher.

Now that we (humanity) can destroy the world, we have reached a level of the same size as the Earth, then we can look at it face to face (the Anthropocene), and so, we can create a violence with (and no more within) him, so we must create a contract with him.

The Object-world: we have created objects with the size of the world (or even larger), for example, objects like plastic can outlast the lifetime of the world. This would be the maximum violence to the world, and so we should make the peace with him.

Informational Contract should create an informational world, creating peace with the information. This could be a next step after the Natural Contract.

There is a epistemodicea: a work about the relationship between science and law; reason and judgment.

The war pacts struggles in order not to all of us die, one per one till the end. The war is therefore a solution, but what kills us indiscriminate are violence (that is, violence without contract, mere violence). Then, the natural contract, is peace with the world.

Three standard contracts: War, Fortuna and Jupiter.

Hermes (The God of relations) is announcing to us the world as a whole, and he will be replaced by his son, Pan (The God of globalization), the world as a whole. Humanity as a whole, it is the tectonic form that can destroy the world, and it is handled in the information.

We have lost the long term, we have lost the myth, and then we live in the ritual: bureaucracy, administration and pure short term.

The science and law are born at the same time, and born of the limit. This born is placed in Egypt whith the Nile floods that erased the barriers crops. Then, the harpedonaptas used to come ( because they were the experts in law and mathematics) and they restored the crops.

The origin of the word contract is the string. A contract is a way to create strings that bind you with somewhat or something.

ATLAS:

The inclusive / excluded third. This concept was taken later by STS and Agamben (Ban). The "Ors-là" is a shadow that chases the protagonist, where the only way to kill him is to killing oneself. The parasite as a para-site, is next to you. The parasite is the event, that what you do not expect. Who am I? I'm The third. The third included. What is the meaning of this word? I am associated intimately to another and many more. Yes, I am legion: an innumerable set of others. (page 78)

Our construction of the History is a permanent attempt to kill the parasites (in the classical and linear history).

"The "Ors-là" is the third element, the para-site that is always in the relation. And it's not dialectic, but the third exclusided-inclusive".

The Joker, is very important to Serres, it can take on any value (the joker's blanket).

Kineteca: tank movement. Networks are kinetecas for Serres.

Extitution is also a concept appeared in Serres.

Serres, when he is asked about what we can do with an Atlas: "Simulation (or scenarios) links together reason and existence. Simulation says how algorithms and methods are connected through paths or roads". Here are a connection between rationality and existence.

The force is in the fragile: in the details, as well as in the mall or in the weak.

The fold is the element of form, the atom form, his clinamen. The clinamen is the minimum turn, the minimal turn which is necessary to create an inflection in that stream of atoms that is the reality. The difference is what produces a point of reality.

To the small, or within the big: the fold is the connector (clinamen) that would move us form the place and from the space.

Until the fluid has a limit: instead, the wind, has no limits. Have you noticed that our language says that the fragile suppose, because broke, a solid material? How do fluid can not break and lasts longer and better than the rigid? (page 187)

Homothetic, is that which is homogeneous in its parts. The relationship between the global and the local are not homothetic. Because the relationship has to do with the heterogeneous, you do not know how it will be the path between the global and the local: it is uncertain, it can be or not to be ... so it is precarious.

Serres say that mathematics are born in a virtual circuit, on a string. You can not put an exact date. Serres says that Maths born in Mesopotamia, then they go to Egypt, passing through Greece, and return to Egypt, but you can not locate exactly in a historical coordinates.

Formerly, in its origin, the particular adjective, somewhat alchemical, was equivalent to the viscous substance: it was the opossite to the fluid, The origin of the word expresses the result of growth (cresare) of several elements placed together (cum) and then, to lead into another body. It would seem the product of a chemical reaction! In addition, its true meaning brings him about to the dynamics of the mixtures. This growth resembles a sort of extension (page 103)

Photo Credit: David Stanley