New paper sent: Biopolitics, biosurveillance and bios

This week we have been reviewing and finishin a new paper that we will send along this years to

"Convergencia, Revista de Ciencias Sociales" journal.  A Mexican and bilingual Spanish-English Journal. In this post, we want to offer some points about this paper. We hope it will be accepted and published soon!

Title: BIOPOLITICS SHIFT IN THE 21ST CENTURY: SYNDROMIC OBSERVATION AS CONTEMPORARY (BIO)MONITORIZING DEVICE.

Abstract: 

Currently, biopolitics conception is widely spread and accepted in the Social Sciences since Michel Foucault popularize it in the 70’s in their lessons at the Collège de France. Basing us on our study case about epidemics and biosurveillance that we are carrying out for three years with several documental materials, interviews and focus groups; we point out that biopolitics is an outdated concept for the events of the beginning of the 21^st Century and we put forward syndromic observation as a new control dispositif not for control, but monitorization; and where citizenship, before surveilled; plays an active and surveilling role. Finally, we offer the main axes that describe syndromic observation.

Material employed:

1) European Council Directives

2) Infographics and diagrams realated with epidemics and biosurveillance.

3) CDC and WHO documents.

4) Newspapers news.

Some key references (in Spanish):

Deleuze, Gilles, (2014), El Poder. Curso Sobre Foucault II, Buenos Aires: Cactus.

Fearnley, Lyle. (2008), “Signals come and Go: Syndromic Surveillance and Styles of Biosecurity” en Environment and Planning A, núm. 40, 1615-1632.

Foucault, Michel, (2007), El Nacimiento de la Biopolítica, Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Foucault, Michel, (2003), Hay que Defender la Sociedad, Madrid: Akal.

Photo Credit: Hong Cham Bum

Jorge Castillo Seminary part I. Cancer, biopolitics and subjectivation

This week we attended to the Jorge Castillo-Sepúlveda seminary about Govermentality, Biosociality and Biopolitics. Here you can read the first part of our report:

Evidence. Differences between the representational framework vs etymological meaning ( "what is evident, making something in one or more contexts).

Evidence about life:

-Origin of the shown work: Technoscientific scenarios for diseases in Catalonia . Importance of protocols and guidelines. Implications for patients  and experience configuration in the biomedical network.Cancer (object, not just the patient), also takes actions that influence patient decisions (whether they are treated or not, emotions, etc.). Result: The evidence-based medicine sets its own standards of objectivity. Ensambka disease in a new socio-technical grammar.

Medicine based on evidence (MBE) is a medicine based on knowledge and tested diagnostics (the knowledge is valid if it is test internationally in different trials). They are specified in protocols and guidelines. Cambrosio: the objective is included in a guideline or protocol, because it has been well established arbitrarily. The real is that which depends on certain regulations. The MBE changes medicine: it realigns biology and medicine, creating what we know as biomedicine. Health-pathology debate is reconfigured according to the provisions of a number of propositions enrolled in clinical guidelines.

The context is very different between Chile and Catalonia: the neoliberal framework ban medical protocols to be applied because this "cuts" the free exercise of their profession. In addition, it is impossible without the intervention of private companies. Disease in Chile, is what protocols and guidelines grounded in MBE say. Health is to access to minimum benefits and guarantees. The citizen becomes a consumer and he is not a patient anymore. It does not guarantee health, but technology, quality, performance (if it is not proved by evidence it is not collected as health).

Guarantee vs warranty. The first is the formal assurance that certain conditions are met. The second is the written guarantee that promises to replace or repair an item (the person is a body that must be replaced or repaired certain elements). Redefinition of the relationship between public and private. The State does not monitor the health market, but creates his own one, as well that it is powered by State in relation to the allocation of certain rights to citizens.

"GES diseases" (diseases gathered in a protocol by the Chilean State, that are state-funded) are different from "non-ges diseases". Differing modes of access to health systems. The subject of law becomes consumer: the concept of citizenship is redefined. 

Subjectivity (Latour interface, something which registers certain experiences. Connections that an entity of human character learns to register. Agency distributed between humans and non-human (Artur Leal)). Regulations redefine the notion of pathology. Protocols relocate the body and distribute it among many different actors and organizations that register their properties and then invest this knowledge about it. In this moment arise vitality regimes: truths that govern how we manage our own lives and how we meant by ourselves.

Embodiment: incarnate expression of disease. Having a body is the ability to affect and be affected. Corporealization of pathology is the process by which a biomedical proposal establishes certain conditions affecting the person.

Biopolitics to biogubernamentality. Biosociality (forms / social practices arising from a  biological feature, knowledge or concern).

"Ges" as a governmental expression of life through its protocols and the promoting of biosociality. Biogubernamentality, then, rules at the basis on the biomedical strategies, creating biomedical subjects and biomedical forms to understand ourselves. Moreover, beyond the proper sphere of biomedicine and go beyond.

Photo Credit: Eric Gjerde

New open seminary by Jorge Castillo: Biopolitics, Biosociality, and Governamentality: Socio-Technical Associations in the Health and Illness Government

Next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, our colleague Jorge Castillo, arrived from the Psychology School of the Santiago de Chile's University, will explain some ideas about his current work and research. The title of this seminary is "Biopolitics, Biosociality, and Governamentality: Socio-Technical Associations in the Health and Illness Government". The meeting will be in Spanish, from 16:00 to 20:00, and is open to anyone who wants to come (Martín Baró's Room, Social Psychology Department, UAB).

Here we offer a little abstract about the topics and ideas that Jorge will explain:

The seminary is adressed to researchers whose project is related with the concept of bio-governmentality in order to understand the relationships between a) recent political

institutional formations, b) the development of technologies in biomedical knowledge on various socio-economic scenarios, and c) subjective and personal productions. For this, we propose the three thematic approach, each considering a case study:

Table of Contents.

Day 1 social studies of biomedicine.

a) Science, Technology and Society: semiotic approaches to the study of materials biomedical activities .

b) Micropolitics of normality: a case study of cancer in Barcelona.

Day 2. Evidence-based policy and power as prehension.

a) Modernization and political scenarios.

b) Case Study: power and evidence-based policies.

Day 3. Biogovernmetality.

A) From biopolitics to biosociality.

b) Case study: obligation schemes, somatocracy and acceleration in the system Explicit Guarantees in Health from Chile.


Finally, we offer his main milestones as researcher (in Spanish):


Jorge es psicólogo por la Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Máster en Investigación en Psicología Social y Doctor en Psicología Social por la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, con la tesis “Oncología y ontología, un análisis semiótico-material del cáncer”, que analiza desde la teoría del actor-red, las implicancias de la articulación de tecnologías y prácticas biomédicas en le redefinición del significado socio-material de la enfermedad. Desde marzo de 2013, se desempeña como Profesor Asistente en la Escuela de Psicología de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

Sus ámbitos de interés se relacionan con los tipos de gobierno sustentados en procesos de índole biológica, y su relación con prácticas y procedimientos biomédicos. De manera más específica, su labor se ha especializado en realizar descripciones de diagramas biopolíticos y modos contemporáneos de gubernamentalidad.

Actualmente, es investigador principal del proyecto PAI Nº 791220018, relacionado con la 
performatividad de las políticas basadas en la evidencia en Chile, e investigador responsable del proyecto Fondecyt de Iniciación en Investigación Nº 11140590, titulado “Aportes de los Estudios de Ciencia y Tecnología a la comprensión de enfermedades abordadas por la medicina basada en la evidencia: regímenes de subjetivación, corporización y biosocialidad en el GES”, ambos financiados por la Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica de Chile (CONICYT).

Photo Credit: Shawn Campbell

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

Biocapitalism, state of exception, and scenarios.

After several weeks shaping a new paper about biocapitalism (you can read about our first ideas here), we are finalizing it with new concepts and theories where our recent seminaries have had a clear influence (particularly, the Agamben's reading). 

Finally, the paper is about a brief review about the biopolitical proposal given by Agamben, and then we offer our particular vision. The key idea is the political axis is not longer the "leading actor" in our contemprary time about the law or govermentality, but it is the techno-scientific knowledge about the bios and life. Despite some theories like Rose for instance, we propose that this shift till the techno-scientific rule is fostered by the scenario concept.

What is then, a scenario?, it is the techno-scientifical injuction where the classical and positive conception about the Scientific Method is substituted by the creation of fictional futures within the preparedness logic of government. Our novelty results by placing the scenario-creation before the prearedness. Scenarios, then, are the new state of exception within this new key role of bioscience and biotechnology. This state of exception creates deterritorialized life flows without a main figure (unlike for Agamben, which talks about the Homo Sacer figure).

How we explain the performance of this new logic? Through the equipment concept given by Foucault. In the paper, we offer some examples about how it works, and you can read it when the paper is available. We want to offer a new conception about the role of bioscience in our contemporary life, and some points about a new state of exception articulated by the same kind of knowledge. 

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Wes Peck.

Weekly seminary: Homo Sacer & Giorgio Agamben

This week we have another meeting in order to discuss about the book by Agamben, Homo Sacer. Although the reunion will be this wednesday, in this case we want to talk about it before because in the next post (Thursday), we will announce an important new from POBICS and from part of our big group, STS-b. 

For this reading, we will propose some of this points as key elements to discuss:

• The concept of Ban (Sovereign Ban)
• What is Homo Sacer?
• What are the difference between the biopolitical concept by Foucault and by Agamben?
• The state of exception and the present

In the first place, the ban is the key concept that allows to creating the notion of state of exception. Thus, the ban consists on stablish a relation with that is outside the relationship. In this vein, due to the ban, life can be linked to law thoughout an un-binding, including only by an exclusion. The state of exception in the current days, within the vision of Agamben can be seen practically in each action of our daily life: this zone of indifference and transit between life and zoè, nature and culture; has been imposed and widespread. The current preparedness and biosurveillance logic makes that our zoè emerge where we see a new about Ebola, when we think about vaccinate agains the flu, or when we interact with a new app that alerts us about where is a new outbreak.

The ban is an important and quite interesting concept because it allows to explain several event and situtations in some other fields. For instance, to our current researches, we can talk about the ban relationship between life and biosurveillance: life only would be understood within the exclusion stablished by protocols, laws and the biomedical knowledge. In this vein, the dog Excalibur (the dog that was given death due to the contact with her owner, Teresa Romero) cannot be seen as a murder, but as a bare (or sacred) life. 

About Homo Sacer, the central concept of the book, understood as the person that people have tried for a crime, but it is not lawful for sacrifice. But if someone would kill him, the latter would not be convicted of murder, is the "condition sine qua non" to understand the biopolitical project by Agamben. This concept is quite related with the concept of ban, and it lets us to "generalize" to other species this feature of give death without a punishment of law nor the bad vision of people. The Excalibur dog example is a good illustration about it. Here, we can also bring the thanatopolitics concept by Rose in order to understand better this "skip" from the ethical or political trial. 

Finally, the biopolitical project by Agamben points out that all of our contemporary  political moment is biopolitics: the politics has been substituted by biopolitics, understood as this attempt to reduce life to zoè. Furthermore, the biopolitics tries to make the shift from a state to the state of exception, a permanent situation where the normative law is suspended and the state of exception is become the rule. However, for Foucault, the biopolitics is an "older" concept in the sense that is not "refreshed" with the last events of this decades, and it is explained within the states and their births in the XIX Century. Foucault uses the biopolitics as a control tool, linked to the policy and statistics, and less to law and the classical law.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Thierry Ehrmann

Empire seminary. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt reading

Today, we have held the first seminary of the biopolitics cycle we announced last week. 

In this first meeting, we have revised the main work by Negri and Hardt, Empire, at the basis of this index:

1. What is Empire?
2. About multitude concept
3. Biopolitics on Negri & Hardt vs Biopolitics on Foucault

In this vein, We bring today some questions, ideas and thinkings about the three points:

1) What is Empire?

It is an operation where inclusion, differentiation and administration from the state of emergency. This state of emergency manages differences, allows and power the existence of differences between us. This differeces are cultural differences and they are the only ones allowed to exist.

The Empire is inclusive, seeking include us within.

There is no territorial border, nor temporal border: Empire suspends history. There is nothing out of it: even the story is inside it.

2) About multitude concept:

Multitude is a sum, a transformation, where co-operation is given from a desire to live.

Multitude is a concept of political science and constitutional law which represents the social multiplicity of subjects who are able to act together as an agent of biopolitical production within the political system.

Multitude is also an operation, but an operation of co-operation, where many entities cooperate without refuse each one to its own idiosyncrasies (if they resign to this own particular features, then they have a shared identity and it would not a multitude).

His only thing in common is their ability to create. But creation that comes from many different places, with reviews and plural and diverse cultures.

The crowd may not be permanent, stable and universal characteristics. It changes ... noody does not know what to expect from her.

3) Biopolitics on Negri & Hardt vs Foucault:

Foucault links the biopolitical exercise to the state, and the state is for him the old nation-state. In Negri, the biopolitical exercise is linked to the Empire. The Empire is a deterritorialized and a large operation because it is everywhere but it is also in the small things of the daily life.

The biopolitics of Negri is global, with a full and global mobilization of life sciences, it is a knowledge about risk. The technologies used are the information. Biopolitics is a difference mangement (multitude).

In contrast, Foucault, biopolitics is machine body / body-species management and uses human and social sciences. Knowledge is a nomic knowledge that uses energy technologies, and where there is biopolitics-biopower transformation.

In Negri: Managing the difference.

In Foucault: Creating something.

The first Foucault: First power, then resistance.

Negri: Power relations grow on the multitude (this one is first than Empire), which is the creative capacity of people. Empire is one step behind the multitude and always tries to reach it. It may be that at the end the multitude overthrow to the Empire.

The black swan is possible for a host of creative acts, which are concatenated and they have a very visible (the fall of the Berlin Wall) effect, but others are not so visible.

Biopolitics in Negri is global.

Productive work has become increasingly less material (cognitive capitalism), and we have also to keep in mind the communicative dimension (big difference with Foucault).

The empire is corruption. It is the biopolitical exercise. The imperial operation is itself the biopolitical exercise. Empire and biopolitics have become the same dimension: is not that one use to the other, but they are the same thing. The Empire is the dispositif of the biopoltics.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Jef safi

New cycle of readings by POBICS!

Yesterday in our last meeting, we set a new cycle of readings for this spring at the success of our cycle of seminaries about Deleuze. Concretely, we have to split the cycle in 3 courses. They will be every week at Wednesday, 15:00 at the Martín Baró Classroom (Department of Social Psychology, Autonomous University of Barcelona), but there are some exceptions (like the first meeting in the next week, that will be Monday and not Wednesday, at 15:00). The courses are:

a) A biopopolitical review beyond Foucault: Empire, Homo Sacer and Ethopolitics.

b) Semiotics of the image: Visual Methodologies, and Cinema I & II.

c) Compilation about Gabriel Tarde. 

As we have said, the seminaries will begin next Monday with the reading of Empire, by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. You can consult the whole list here:

NEW WAYS OF BIOPOLITICS

- April 13th: Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

- April 22th: Homo Sacer by Giorgio Agamben

- May 6th: Policies of life. Biomedicine, power and subjectivity in the XXI century by Nikolas Rose

 

REGIMES OF IMAGES IN CONTEMPORARY

- May 13th: Visual Methodologies by Gillian Rose

- May 20th: Cinema I. Bergson and images by Gilles Deleuze

- May 25th: Cinema II. Signs of movement and time by Gilles Deleuze

THE END OF THE SOCIAL. GABRIEL EVENING READING

- June 3th: Monadology and sociology by Gabriel Tarde

- June 10th: Beliefs, desires, societies  byGabriel Tarde

- June 17th: The social laws by Gabriel Tarde

All the sessions are opened and are free. You can come wherever you want and only to those you are interested (if you cannot come to the complete cycle). You can invite and tell everyone that could be interested.

If you need more information, contact with us in this email:

portraitsbioscontemporary@gmail.com 

Thank you so much!

Photo Credit: By ourself, one of our last meetings.

Cinepolitics and Biosecurity

The post I want to publish today is about a new condition we are researching in relation with biosecurity and the politic management, surveillance and power.

In fact, as I have already written a post where I talk about biosecurity and biopolitics, pointing out some short ideas mentioning the work of Foucault, Agamben or Negri, for instance. The reason for the brevity of that post is we are deploying a work where biopolitics would give away to cinepolitics, that is to say, the management of movement or flows, and no longer souls or bodies as it happens in biopolitics.

However, what is cinepolitics exactly? As Tirado (2010) says, consists in a highlight into the Foucault notion of movement within biopolitics. In this sense, Foucault assumes that movement is one variable that is added to either vital and biologics that shape biopolitics. Nonetheless, in cinepolitics the key concept is this movement, located at the same level of biology where control and management is carried out by the exchange and motility.

Thus, control and management is exercised throughout the movement of data (in a Nikolas Rose interpretation), information (maybe XXXX) or bioactants in this case. For instance, a virus that is transported by a flock of sheep or bacteria that comes from a tropical country to Europe through an air travel. The result is typically shown in maps where fluxes are enacted with arrows or lines. Because of this, bodies are no longer the key concept of management: there is a shift where bodies become solely a further element, that is to say, one bioactant more in the set of bioactants put on stage. Now, we can say that one essential feature of bioactant is the need of movement.

In this realm of cinepolitics, bodies are transformed: we are in front of open bodies, bodies that lookout better than look in, and waiting for connections with other bioactants. The most important issue then, is not what is connected but how is the connection:

a    a) The connection folds space and time: bioactants perform as acceleration operators. 

    b)The body is no longer self-contained: body is one element that flows and is monitored due to its open nature. Body is constituted by a set of little bodies (human-virus-bacteria-animals) that is a potential risk from others bioactants (flocks, population… but also economy, public infrastructure…).

References:

Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be Defended. New York: Picador.

Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Tirado, Francisco. Baleriola, Enrique. Amaral Giordani, M. Do. A. Giordani, Tiago. Torrejón, Pedro. (2014). Subjetividad y subjetivadores en las tecnologías de bioseguridad en la Unión Europea. Polis e Psique, 3(4), 23-50.

Tirado, F. (2010). Cinepolítica y cinevalor: la gran transformación de la biopolítica. In Ignacio Mendiola (ed.) Rastros y rostros de la biopolítica. Barcelona: Anthropos.

PhotoCredit: Flickr, user Alexander Babashov

Upcoming paper II: Cosmopolitics and Biopolitics in the Biosecurity Regimes of the European Union

As I said in the last post, we have been reported that two of our papers will be published soon. I have already talked about the first one, and now, I am go to give some ideas about the second one: Cosmopolitics, Biopolitics and Biosecurity.

For this paper, we begin talking about a new shift in the early XXI century in the realm of security –as Foucault pointed out in Security, Territory and Population – to the biosecurity. I have wrote something about it here.

The main question in this paper is about Cosmopolitics, and for that, we have used the Stengers conception. Hence, cosmopolitics can be defined as politics referred to the production of a common cosmos, an arena of action that we share and that evolves us, affecting to all of us in our daily routines. I am aware the concept is quite more complex but it will be explain in the paper.

Thus, from this concept we want to argue that currently, life is problematized and has become a new veridiction object: cosmopolitics and biopolitics are the two sides of the same dispositif that grows and makes sense reconceptualising life in the way that was understood by Science in the XIX and XX centuries.

But, what about this new life? We have stablished five main axes:

-         - Life if movement

-          -Life is threat

-          -Life is economy

-          -Life is displayable

-          -Life is a multi-scale event

The way we have operate for this five axes is to create a thick description where we have illustrate all of them with European regulations and council directives, some  images and other kind of materials about the biosecurity topic.

Finally, we conclude with a compilation of cosmopolitics consequences that justifies our analysis, supported by some biopolitics ideas in order to refresh the foucauldian notion.


References:

Foucault, M. (2009). Security, Territory and Population. New York: Picador. 


Photo Credit: By myself supported by myFnetwork

Upcoming paper: subjectivity and subjectifiers in European Union technologies of biosecurity

We have been reported that in the coming days, two of our new papers will be published in both Brazilian and Chilean journals of Social Sciences. The first of them is titled Subjectivity and Subjetifiers in European Union Technologies of Bioecurity, and here I am go to make and advance for all of you.

To this paper, we worked with some Spanish online-press news that pointing forward virus, bacteria, outbreaks or pandemics. Our aim was to describe some ideas in an Actor-Network Theory sense, where we can understand this news as a mediator-technology in the Latour theory. Hence, using some extracts of this news, we can illustrate the idea of subjectifier and scenario.

We understand subjectifiers as an element that offers to subject the possibility of a connexion with a reflective effect. A subjectifier is a portion of knowledge, ideas, images; that allow the person define itself. For the idea of scenario, we defined it as an element defined by having an affect attached to it. In this sense, throughout the paper we expose some illustrative examples about these concepts with the press-news, following the case of study methodology’ tradition. A scenario is the outcome of the connection of several subjectifiers, offering an affection with which to assess and complete the reflective exercise offered by subjectifiers.

As conclusion, we point out that biosecurity is not only to protect the population against some diverse biohazards, but referring to discourses, practices, images, laws, protocols, etc.

Finally, in order to understand the relation between biosecurity and subjectivity is necessary to use the technology-as-mediator concept. This deal is not about a narrative creation and an internalization of it later; but a connections issue, linked to mobile elements.

References:

Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s Hope, London: Harvard University Press.

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social, New York: Oxford University Press.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Procsilas Moscas (http://bit.ly/1uq4ICV)

Bioactants

One of the key concepts on my dissertation is bioactant, and hence, the topic I talk today is about it.

Bioactant is a new concept I thought one year ago, when I was beginning to read some ideas from Lakoff, Rabinow, Collier and others anthropologists, as well as I was also deepening in the Actor-Network Theory. Product of both of these studies, I started to fit the jigsaw and I considered this concept was helpful in order to understand certain current issues about biopolitics and the bios management.

Thus, in short, bioactant can be defined as whatever equipment which action implies a reorganization or a shift in the biotic. I am aware is a general definition, but I prefer it that way because the same nature of the concept comes from a global-scale that can be grounded or located, but otherwise, starting on the local is quite difficult to find common elements.

On the other hand, when I point out the biotic I am referring to any kind of life, taking into account that life never is just one animal, person, cell or bacterium (as I wrote about ebola). Rather I conceive it as an entanglement which result is a living-being, where living is the feature given to this being (i.e. we live with millions of bacteria over our skin, and there are one of the equipment that allows us to be understood as a living being). With this example, we can conceive bacteria as a bioactant that grants any feature to other thing within a biotic realm.

Equipment should be understood in a Actor-Network Theory, as an plug-in that is attached with us. Latour wrote about it in Reassembling the Social. For sure, I don't have totally clear this idea, but is true that there is something about the notion of paraskeue that Foucault puts forward in The Hermeneutics of the Subject.

Nevertheless, there are also bioactants that give a negative feature or that take away some feature to the thing that is assembled. Considering the traditional difference between bíos and zoé at the Greek age, pointed out by Agamben, some bioactants can transform a bíos, the valuable life in Rose terms in a merely zoé, non-valuable life. This shift can be investigated under a thanatopolitics view, the management of death.

Finally, within the Actor-Network Theory, a bioactant is an actant in the Greimàs sense and defined by Latour as be anything provided it is granted to be the source of an action, with the incorporation of a biotic sense or with some direct or indirect biotic implication.

References:

Agamen, G. (1996). Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. California: Standford University-Press.
Foucault, M. (2005). The Hermeneutics of the Subject. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Greimas, A.L. y Courtès, J. (1982) Semiótica. Diccionario razonado de la teoría del lenguaje. Madrid: Gredos

Latour, B. (1996). On actor-network theory. A few clarifications. Soziale Welt, 47, 1996, p. 369-382

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social. New York: Oxford.

Rabinow, P. Rose, N. (2006). Biopower Today. BioSocieties, 1, 195-217.

Photocredit: taken by myself.

Biopolitics & Biosecurity

In the last post I wrote were pointed out some ideas questioning if ebolavirus could be understood not merely as a virus, but a complex and heterogeneous entanglement constituted by artifacts, machines, technologies and other kind of materialities. Although I not mentioned it, there are other kind of elements like discourses, scientists, ideologies, enterprises, stakeholders and customers, for instance.

My dissertation is titled “Bioactants and biopolitics in the Preparedness and Surveillance Projects of the European Union” in line with one of the social interpretations of this topic. Biopolitics is a term within a large tradition in social sciences, whose most influent author was Michel Foucault although Rudolf Kjellén created the term.

Biopolitics as Foucault defined it: power over life has been exercised in the twin forms of the "anatomo-politics of the human body" and the "biopolitics of population." Both powers—that of bodily disciplines and that of the government of the population—are thus articulated around sexuality, and they support and reinforce each other.

Despite Foucault wrote  “The Birth of Biopolitics” or “Society must be Defended” talking about this management of life since the rise of Liberalism applied to sexuality, the jail or the asylum; it was not until Rabinow, Rose, Agamben, Negri or Espósito when biopolitics studies took off and were updated over the years because Foucault died in 1984. Thus, we can see Rabinow for instance:

We can use the term ‘biopolitics’ to embrace all the specific strategies and contestations over problematizations of collective human vitality, morbidity and mortality; over the forms of knowledge, regimes of authority and practices of intervention that are desirable, legitimate and efficacious.

Also Agamben when apply biopolitics to the bare life understood as the greek bíos reduced to zoé, a kind of life that emerges in an increasingly an even more naturalized state of exception.

Regarding biosecurity, I argue the turn into the logic of government from precaution to preparedness in the last decades also have biopolitical consequences:

•   New epidemics, outbreaks and diseases from this logic of preparedness look for an anticipatory knowledge of the emergence. This is achieved with new surveillance techniques based on computer and BigData technology where population are no longer conceived as a closed body, but an inter-connected body, intervened and embodied in dataflows and enacted in maps or diagrams.
• 
  
• Preparedness is bring to present a future possible threat through a new form of risk calculation: scenario planning. Thus, the management of life, bíos in the Agamben sense, become real in the present from a virtual future.
• 
  
• Life is redefined. From now, life can no longer be conceived aside from neither biotechnology nor bioscientific knowledge. What is life today, is defined by this kind of knowledge and no by right, law or royal power.

More info:

Rabinow's webpage 

References:

Agamben, G. (1995). Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. California: Standfor University Press.

Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be Defended. New York: Picador.

Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rabinow, P. Nikolas, R. (2006). Biopower Today. Biosocieties, 1, 195-217.

Photo Credit: Flickr User Cesar Harada