On the Government of the Living part I. Last seminary by POBICS

Yesterday, in POBICS we held a new seminary. In this case, as we have noticed last week, we read the last book published in Spanish written by Foucault: "Del Gobierno de los Vivos" (On the Government of the Living in English). In this post, we will offer some thoughts, notes and comments about the first part of the book (the second part will take place next wednesday, at 11:00 on Social Psychology Faculty of the UAB, Barcelona. Open and free for you!)

Here the comments:

Government truth = governmentality.

Idea of ​​aleturgia = reflection incorporated about the truth in the notion of ritual. The truth is not only a matter of knowledge, but also it must be complemented by other elements: the ritual of truth.

The proposal of truth is in the complete work of Foucault, and it was very important, but Deleuze not collected it in his course about Foucault.

The truth today has to do with knowledge neither with the ritual of the procedure to reach the truth. Here, there is an epistemic change: now the ritual is assumed to reach the objective knowledge.

The discovery as a way to find the truth in Oedipus, is an interweaving of medicine and law. It is a judicially aleturgia with an a medical (p. 78)

The question of power through demonstrations of the subject for the truth. Deleuze will question us: How subjects are created?

Foucault, here: How really regimes (not true  itself) of true  are created ?, that is, the types of relationships that link the manifestations of truth with its procedures (how they work); and subjects that are its operators, his witnesses and eventually his subjects. The person is not only the subject of truth, but also their witness and their operators (truth not only create subjects, but also has other roles). Normally the emphais is put on the paper that Foucault gives to subjectivity; but what he really wants to do is a story of the power of truth: how truth becomes something that has power, the power of truth. The main mechanism by which the truth is maintained and operates is subjectivity.

Are there truth processes without subjectivity?

 In Christianity, so to speak, we use the truth. In Oedipus (an older historical formation), I do not need to understand the truth (it is owned by the gods who are those who have the truth). Act of truth: the part that touches the subject in aleturgia processes, defined by the role of the subject as a spectator, as operator and as object.

 From Christianity, and especially from the liberalism version of the XX Century, the object of the persnon in the act of truth is more dominant than the other two (witness and subject). It is possible a new truth or way to present the truth in our work? It would not have to do with the classical risk calculation, but it is focuses on the present. We do a role-playing and present a hypothetical future, projected into the future (what we called scenarios).

 And what now...? Are scenario concept out of phase? We want to propose the ecologies of security.

Photo Credit: Stefan Perneborg

Andrés G. Seguel Seminary: and anthropological view of 2009 H1N1 pandemics

As we announced in our webpage, this week took place the seminary by one of our recurrent Andrés G. Seguel, recently came from Chile. In this ocassion, Andrés has tell us some ideas about his current work and thinkings: influenza, subjectivity, and the emergence of singularities. 

colleagues,

Here our report:

Andres beguns with our famous reading about the work of Deleuze by Foucault (you can read more about it here and here) about the relationship between knowledge and power (and also subjectivity). He came this theories to the symbol/sign relationship, and also wanted to split the substrate from the object (ANT and Foucault never achieved this). How he does that? With the "fold" concept: in a fold, we have captures that allows that some particular object enacts as it is (and not as anyother is), but this enactment is never definitive, but temporal and made from a joint of points.

A singularity is a "indent" in that fold. But, how emerges this singularity? between the relationship and the tension between the different points. The "logoi" concepts allows us to explain it: a logoi is a place where a logic is represented by his tension. When this tension is stabilized, we find a temporal object.

This is related with the subjectivity explained by Deleuze and Guattari in the book "La Subjetivación", but this two authors propose something quite different about subjectivity:

Deleuze: It offers a fold, more large in time, less autonomous, and less changing (more procesual).

Guattari: It offers not a fold, but a "indent", and this indent is faster, more autonomous and more changing and emergent.

In the H1N1 case, technology acts as a key element to the emergence of a singularity: pandemics. It was a very important controversy in 2009, but why?

In 2009, WHO changed the classical definition of a pandemics (two outbreaks in two isolated places one from the another) to the emergence of a new influenza virus against human population has not immunization (we recommend to read the book "Pandemics Perhaps" by Carlo Caduff).

About the relation between information and how works CDC/ECDC and physicias that must alert about suspected cases of flu, this two elements are articulated from:

-Platforms like HealthMap.

-Panoramas (Latour concept).

-Medical platforms where they can predict the number of case of a particular strain of flu.

-Medical protocols.

-Google Flu Trends.

All of this elements makes H1N1 visible, and this is so important to Foucault when he is explained by Deleuze (go to the post linked at the biginning of this post). 

Visibility, then, allows to emerge a particular subjectivity, and this, at the same time, has some concrete afects.

Photo Credit: Jose Ramon Pato

Spring is coming! Brief list about our next seminaries

After 10 days of holidays due to Holy Week, POBICS is coming back and we want to offer next

seminaries we will hold. March has been a very busy month, and we have put off each seminary many times. For this reason, we post here our coming meetings:

-Andrés G. Seguel Seminary: Tomorrow (April 1st) is the last day after two more days of seminary. More info about it here.

-Last book published by Foucault (in Spanish): "Del Gobierno de los Vivos". April 6th, 13th and 20th. From 11:00 to 12:30.

-Joint Meeting of the European Society for the History of Human Sciences: This is the first Congress where POBICS will be this summer. You can read more about it here.

-4S/EASST Congress: The big and most expected congress. We have sent 4 contributions and POBICS is taking part from the inside with our leader, Francisco Tirado. You cant read them here, here, here and here!

-II International Anthropology AIBR Congress: In the same way as the last year, POBICS will be in the AIBR Congress with two new contributions. More info here.

Remember, all of them are free and they are open to you, your buddies, colleagues or anyone interested in. We are in Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), at Psychology Faculty, Martín Baró's room (at Social Psychology Department).

See you soon!

Photo Credit: Sarah Barker

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie summary: "Last Lesson Given by Foucault"

We are coming back and now we want to offer a little and brief summary about how was our meeting in order to discuss about the work about Foucault writen by this author. 

We discussed particularly about some key points:

-Differences between Liberalism - Neoliberalism

-Are we still in a "Homo Oeconomicus" rationalism?

-Was then, Foucault, a Neoliberal?

Foucault will say that there is a fundamental difference between liberalism and neoliberalism that Lagasnerie did not collect: labour. In Marxism theories, labour is a work force that you sell and other pays to you. Nonetheless, in Neoliberalism labour is not a work force: it is a truth with which the subject can understood itself.

Main differences Liberalism-Neoliberalism:

Laissez-faire, do not intervene.	Must intervene under the ground.
The homo economicus is a partner with whom you exchange.	Homo Oeconomicus is not a partner, is a businessman himself, he is his own capital, his own business.
Disciplinary Societies.	Control Societies.
Still believe in the totality and universality.	Charge against any principle of totality, backing the plurality.
It is still not as stressed the role of the experts (When the king is removed, we must to be governed by rules).	The role of experts is much more main in all fields.
Economics is a science of prices and resources.	Economics isa science of  rational decisions.

Economics is the space that offers a better veridiction ground. Neoliberalism is adjusted to control societies, it is the place par excellence of government, the structure is always in economic terms. This may not fit with the idea of Deleuze, because he does not see a predominance of one type of place. 

What would today replaced the entrerprise-form, the entrepreneur of itself? Is there a new diagram where the pre-eminence would not be economic, but biological, for instance? How would it be? 

Photo Credit: Karl-Ludwig Poggemann

New seminary: Geoffroy de Lagasnerie "The Last Lesson Given by Foucault"

As we are announcing along this week, next friday we will hold our first "big seminary" to the 2015-2016 course, and in this opportunity we have chosen this book in order to "close" the Foucault cycle started last year with the Deleuze course about Foucault.

This year, we want to read and to discuss about two main lines after read this book: classics authors from Social Studies of Science and Technology (Latour, Stengers, Woolgar...), and a review about the Michel Serres' work (Le Contrat Naturel, Atlas, Variations sur le Corps).

Having said this, Lagasnerie book is an important chance to understand some other interpretations about Foucault work (different to the deleuzian view, for instance), and also is a good opportunity to link it to current events and ideas we are working. 

In this vein, we think we can learn so much (regardless of whether we agree or not with Lagasnerie) about liberalism using the terms and vocabulary given by Foucault. Undoubtely, it would be an interesting option to add some question to our paper about State of Exception and Capitalism, but to future papers we can discuss it with our current vision and enrich the last one with new ideas. 

Next weekend we will publish the report about this seminary. As always, you are invited and you can tell it to anyone interested in our topics. Meeting we will in the Martín Baro's room, at Social Psychology Department on the Autonomous University of Barcelona (10-23, at 11:00 am). 

Next post we will be about the next EASST Conference which will take place at Barcelona in August-September 2016. POBICS we will participate as organizator and also as a "track" about biorisk and biosurveillance. 

Please,  share this and we would be very happy!

Photo Credit: Thierry Ehrmann 

Last 2014-2015 POBICS seminary: "La Subjetivación", Gilles Deleuze, course about Michel Foucault

Today, we have finished our calendary of seminaries with the last Deleuze's book about Foucault: "La Subjetivación". Undoubtedly, this course has been very important to us due to the great set of concepts, arguments and claims given by Deleuze to understand Foucault's work, but also in order to think about some key concepts in Social Critical Psychology like Power, Subjectivity or another importants philosophic concepts from Kant or Heidegger. 

The two axes around we have talked has been these two-ones:

- What is the subjectivity? It is more than a fold, but what?

- If between power and knowledge there is a actual-virtual relationship, and the subjectivity is a third axis, which is not actual or virtual; then, what is it and what kind of relationship has with the other two ones?

So, we will present as normally we do, the main ideas we have pointed out:

What is properly Foucault, is the answer to the emptiness that causes questions about: what lies beyond the power? What is characteristic of Deleuze would be the explanation about the outside points and its origin in line outside.

Deleuze breaks with the widespread conception of what Foucault calls subjectivity: subjectivity is not knowing, nor is power; It comes from the diagram (power relations), but is independent of them: they are three different ontologies (Knowledge, Power and Subjectivity). But, what is subjectivity then? "The art of itself". Subjectivity comes from the Greek diagram, and then the fold occurs. But within the fold there are not things, no content: there is memory, the absolute memory. Greeks created the possibility that  individuals could be a totality in itself (absolute memory, Bergson's memory concept).

History is a succession of events, but the memory are the conditions to establish relationships between those events. We can have the whole data at the time, but we have all the conditions to establish relationships between these events, i.e, a logic that allows you to understand the History in a particular way, like the rest of the people of your age, you understand the things one way (for instance. 2 + 2 may be 4, and nothing else). This is the absolute memory Bergson.

Westerners have added to the memory of our times the truth (the truth of sexuality, the truth of knowledge ...). In our time we can not think without truth. Subjectivity therefore is not a set of content.

The time that Foucault gives tosubjectivity is much larger than the that one given to power or knowledge. This, restructure Power and Knowledge regarding Subjectivity: the outside line is here, do not look away because in the distance there is only diagrams: subjectivity is more basic than Knowledge and Power (subjectivity becomes autonomous from these two, and them try to catch subjectivity changing more often than this last one, and therefore , being subordinated to subjectivity, it is becomes central (although it not borns before the others one).

So, in this sense...

Knowledge: actual

Power: virtual

Subjectivity: memory

If the resistance points  are singularities or subjectivities, we can talk about micro-practices of subjectivity with the equipment-concept given by Foucault. It is the way given by Foucault in order to convert logos in ethos, as the ethos would be an individual micro-subjectivity.

To govern itself is disengaging from Power and from Knowledge: you become you in your own world.

In the fold the is the unthinkable of thinking: the unthinking are the conditions to think (the absolute memory, conditions, logic); not only the thought (that would be the contents).

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Brande Jackson.

Some notes about the Foucaultian course by Deleuze and our research' topic

After a little break due to a big load of work at the queue (three papers, a project for a grant by the Spanish Government, the final course' evaluation of our PhD students...) we come back to our blog. Today, we only want to point out some ideas about our big and successful seminary on this year: the course taught by Deleuze about the Foucault' work. We also want to remember we have pending the last session about this course the 15th june (the third book about this course is called "La Subjetivación").

In this vein, we want to purpose a brief panorama about this course linking it to our current research:

a) There is a new subjectivation in the "bios era", that is, in the contemporary West societies where biotechnology and bio-medicine are conquering each square of our current life? How is the fold of the outside-line in this time?

b) As Deleuze says, subjectivation needs, firstly, the forms of knowledge and the forces relations. Can we "break" (in the Deleuzian vocabulary) sentences and images in order to extract statements and visibilities? What is that "illuminated" and "said" in our current time under the light and the statable of the bios?

c) We affirm that images has a forgotten role in the contemporary social research, but we foster the role of images in (for instance) ebola epidemics or protocols from other outbreaks. Is it possible that images have taken a new primacy over statements in this time? (next post will be about the role of images in the contemporary psychology, one of the last papers we have been working these days).

d) Are we in a new diagram beyond the third "super-man" diagram? and in this case, what are the features of this fourth diagram?

e) How are the "conquests" from knowledge and power over the subjectivation to shape this last one? Or, in the Felix Guattari comments' sense: If we can allocate an identity to this subjectivation, what it has been the role of power and knowledge?

f) From the Felix Guattari's observation form the Foucault work: how is the new field of perception in the bios era? 

g) Finally, what are the differences between "desire" and subjectivation? we think this difference is important in order to clearify the work by Deleuze from the work by Foucault.

We will try to answer this questions this summer with a new theoretical paper where we want to gather our the ideas emerged in our seminaries. We will keep informing about it soon.

Photo Credit: Flickr, User Jef Safi

A last reconfiguration of our seminaries

After the sudden publication of the third book about the Focaultian course by Deleuze (Ed. Cactus, Buenos Aires), we have decided to reschedule our calendar for the end of this course. In this sense, the readings have been set in this way:

June, 1th: Gabriel Tarde, Social laws and beliefs, desires, societies. 

June, 15th: Gilles Deleuze, The Subjectivation.

For this reasons, we have delay the second Cinema seminary by Deleuze till the next course (most probably, in October). In this vein, we can complete the seminary about the Foucault's course with this little book about the subjectivation. If you want to come to our seminaries, write an e-mail to: portraitsbioscontemporary@gmail.com. Attendance is free and it is located at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, department of Social Psychology. 

In a few moments, you will see in our website the updated information (http://pobics.wix.com/pobics)

Photo Credit: By ourselves, front of "La Sujetivación", by Gilles Deleuze.

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

End of our seminary about Deleuze

As we have notifying along last weeks, yesterday we have finished our seminary about the Deleuzian reading of Foucault. Although we finished the second book last week, we wanted to comment some complementary texts in an additional session in order to clarify some concepts and to purpose another readings alternative to Deleuze. 

In this vein, we have read a little text by Agamben: "What is a dispositif?" and a brief chapter of the Foucault's book by Deleuze (not the 85-86's course, but the book) where Deleuze talks about the Desire (the third pending book) in a few pages. The index for this session was this:

• How can we operationalize the diagram idea?
• Fold-overfold relationship: subject and "oversubject"?

The first questions is about how we can "work" with the diagram, that is, if the diagram is an abstract thing and we cannot "touch" it by itself because it is always melted with the knowledge forms, how can we "resolve" the distance between knowledge and power?

For this question, we have decided to read the Agamben's text:

Agamben, dispositif (or device):  capturing apparatus of living beings. The device according to Agamben is not located at the formal level or stratum, but he moves between the diagram (power) and the stratum (knowledge). In Deleuze, the gap between strategy (power) and stratum is infinite; in Agamben is not infinite and the "jump" is made possible by the device.

The diagram would be identical to what Agamben calls "creatures that enter into relationships". This makes more sense than a plane forces that affect on the outside (the Deleuzian's argument). The diagram is Nietzschean according to Deleuze, but Nietsche has not a microphysical model (Deleuze) but a biological (Agamben).

The device is that network linking institutions, regulations, institutions, laws, scientific statements, etc ... and that the stratum is mixed with strategy.

In Deleuze, living beings are singularities (with the "curve" that match the points drawn, concrete bodies, discrete bodies).

Vitalism is placed in the center of our thinking to life (the bios or the living), and it is not a detachment of life from God, or Science, etc.

We have two great classes, living beings or substances and devices. And, between the two, as a third , we have the subjects. We call subject to the result of the relationship or, as it were, the "melee "between living and appliances.

The idea of ​​device is similar to the capturing apparatus of Deleuze: something that introduces cuts in a magma or situation without form, and then enter a formation. The novelty of Agamben is that there is a relationship: the sovereign depends on homo sacer and viceversa; zoe and bios are a bidiorectionaly relationship between them, there is movement within its continuous, but both pure, do not exist.

For Agamben the device is an apparatus of capture. If you do not "jump" to the device, you stay forever trapped in the intermediate levels proposed by Deleuze (between the forces of power and the stratum). If you do not jump, you'll never reach the end. And this is what makes Agamben, to jump.

About the second question, the "overfold" (a fold within a fold) could mean the proliferation of subjectivities by capitalism. Thus, at the time of the superman-form what we would find is a overfold who identifies with a larger number of subjects (understood as captured by the device). Then, at the time of the man-form, the fold means that there are not many subjectivations.

In the superman-form there is no longer subject, no fold: however, there is connection to the outside of the outside, with the open (Agamben); and the load (the superman loaded with silicon, modern literature and labor).

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Chris Tarnawski

Summary of our 3rd POBICS seminary: First part of "El Poder" by Deleuze

The seminary is being finished, and today we have held the 3rd meeting, the first one talking about the second book about the Foucault's course by Gilles Deleuze. 

The key points of this season was these:

• Difference between stratum / strategy

• Postulates of power

• Diagram's notion

• What does actualize mean ? The dualism of joining / Ddfferentiation

• Difference between the outside / external

Before show our comments, I want to highlight that the seminary has been change in dates, so the next session (wednesday, 18th) we will read the rest of the book (chapters VI-XI) in order to finish it; and the next week (wednesday, 25th) , we want to read one Agamben's text and one text by De Certeau to complement the Deleuzian's book.

Once the changes are explained, you can check our comments:

The micro has to do with power and the macro with knowledge; areality of  forces  and a form's reality; and this is the cause they have different nature. Deleuze in this case, reverses the relationship of how we understand the power and knowledge (or lay people), because we usually understand power as macro and knowing as a micro (the close to our daily practices).

Postulate of legality (the sixth one):when we talk about law, basically we are talking about jurisprudence as practice over practices: practices are sustained over other ones. Where the law fails, the procedure is the juxtaposition of practices that come to fill that gap. There is no law, but distribution of laws, and so the border legal/ illegal is unclear due to these multiple laws. And so illegalities spread: what is illegal is distributed within the law, and that is the purpose of the law, not eliminate illegal, but distribute it within.

• Resistance is another diagram point and it it as forces: resistance comes from outside, and can not be integrated by the knowledge because if not it would be power, and thus it wouldn't be resistance. To solve the problem of resistance, we must resort to De Certeau when he talks about strategy and tactics. Deleuze will take the subject in his third book (The Wish). Resistance is at the microphysics of power in Deleuze.

• For Deleuze, the subject is a set of vectors or intensities that are packaged at a specific time. How you get that package, when it is formed? Foucault  proposes that the relationship between knowledge-power-subject is a relationship of immanence: knowledge and power are not on different planes, and subject is immanent to these two. We can not talk about a subject without talking about power or knowledge ... each plane appeals to the other two, but they are not the same, they are separated.

• The Roll Dice: there is not evolutionary processes, because this involves a process of development (a directional and progessive History). But this is not in that vein, it appears suddenly with not previous process.

• A device is the specific stratified formations given by Foucault. They are actualizations in the diagram. The device is one of the ends of a continuum, from the other side, the other end would be the most abstract and general diagram:

•  Agamben gives another interpretation, saying the devide is in the midst of the strategy and the stratum. Is a connection between the stratum and the diagram

• The device can freeze or crystallize certain power relations on the diagram. The device is freezing the diagram.

That's all, we recommend to read the book in order to obtain a complete vision of this issues and thus, understand our comments. We also want to hear you and maintain the questions. What do you think about the relationship between knowledge and power? What is your diagram's conception? 

Photo Credit: By ourself in the seminary. 

Summary of our second seminary about "El Poder": 05-03

Yesterday, we finished the first Deleuze's book about Foucault, "El Saber", retaking the discussion carried out the last week abot statements, knowledge and the relationship (or no-relation) between the visible and the statable. 

In this session, we wanted to answer three main questions:

1. The relationship between the statable and the visible

2. How could be possible a relationship in the non-relationship between the statable and the visible?

3. How is the movement from knowledge to power?

So these points were the central topic of our seminary. First of all, we concluded that the relationship between the statable and the visible is base on the mutual capture. There is no knowledge without mutual capture between the visible and enunciable: no knowledge is possible without a mutual interlacement between them.

It is not translatable (in Actor-Network Theory terms), the catch is only possible (it only can be explained) jumping to another dimension, power. Jumping to the other axis, we move to the second book (we will talk about it next week). So, summing up, dualism on Foucault and Deleuze: we start from two forms, then we jump to another dimension that brings up a multiplicity (centers of power).

In this vein, we have to highlight that power is not a form, is an informal dimension: power has not form. 

Another interesting questiong that emerged in the seminary, was about an example given by Foucault when he talked about the Magritte's picture of a pipe with the sentence: "this is not a pipe". Thus, Deleuze shows us the relation between the statable and the visible with this picture in this sense:

"This is not a pipe: you can not put the sign "this is a pipe" under the picture of a pipe, because the pipe drawn is a picture, not a real pipe. Therefore, the only sentence that is possible is "this is not a pipe", which would be the statement, and acts as mediator (Actor-Network Theory again). The transfer traslate us, a move from one medium to another (from reality to the drawing). If we put the phrase "this is a pipe", we would be breaking the principle that a statement has no external reference, only refers to itself."

(This paragaph is our, reading Deleuze, but not him directly).

It is quite difficult to understand when we are referring to a sentence or a statement. A sentence is the "mark" of the statable, the place where we look for a statement, but never it is a statement itself. We have to break sentences in order to find statements.

We can deduce then, that statements are only necessary when there is a change of medium (heterogeneous system), if not, the statement is not necessary (eg. ZERT is not a statement within the typewriter because it is their original place, but what is when we write on paper it becomes a statement). Perhaps is more easy to understand whith the yoga's examples given in the last seminary.

Finally, answering the question about how we move from knowledge to power, we had more problems because we have not yet read the second book, but, as Deleuze does, we "spread" some topics in order to delimit the topic:

1. Power is to be able to do (the ability to): can to do, can to speak ... no power in a negative sense or oppressive power.

2. Power relations establish a dispersion of singularities; if we change the dispersion of singularities, then changes the relationship of singularities.

3. Knowledge is a form; power is a force. There is a relationship between them although different dimensions.

4. Power is not up nor down of knowledge, but is immanent to know.

5. The power is not derived from an institution, but the institutions are integrating a force field that is power. Like the statement prevails on light,  power prevails over knowledge.

That is all, we hope you have undestood our discussion, and we want to hear your opinions about the relationship between power and knowledge; the visible and the statable.

Photo Credit: Flickr, Steven Zucker (Ceci n'est pas a pipe, by Magritte)

A brief summary about our first POBICS seminar

As I posted the last week, yesterday we held the first session of the seminary about the Foucaultian's course by Deleuze with the first five chapters of the book "El Saber". 

The meeting was so interesting because we achieved to answer several questions about the Foucault's work. The index of the seminary was:

1. What is knowledge?
2. What is archeology? / Why do archeology?
3. What is a file?
4. Four Deleuzian thesis on the components of knowledge
5. Why Foucault is a Kantian?
6. What is a statement? / Criticism of traditional linguistics

During the two hours of the reunion we discussed about this questions, some easier to answer than others. The key idea is around the first question (what is knowledge in Foucault?) and how we can extract a statement. We deduced that extract, in this sense, is a synonymous of "compose" because there isn't a concrete way to operate in order to "catch" the statement from phrases, clauses, sentences or words.

The most important process in order to do this, is summarized in these points:

1. Build a corpus: a set of words, phrases ... where we clear regularities.
2. Where can we look for the corpus? In the foci of power.
3. The foci of power are drawn from the daily practices, not from great authors (this practice is inherited from the School of the Annales)

Along the session, Francisco Tirado drew at the blackboard the graphic you can watch in the blog's image. This represent an example about a sentence: "Yoga is a health practice". He showed this example because in the Deleuze's book is quite difficult to understand or apprehend what is a statement with the illustration he gives.

So we have the sentence "Yoga is a healthy practice" and we have "cut" the sentence:

Yoga: it has been a science, a way of life, not a practice. It never was linked to health, but happiness. Nonetheless,  today we can link it to the practice and health. This is because there is a rule that allows them to join: the imperative of health. The imperative of health is the extracted (or composed) statement of this sentence.

The imperative of health operates in different and heterogeneous systems forming the associated field: in medicine, yoga, day by day, the law ...

There is a particular object, is dispersed, is spoken. It is the boundary of the statement.

The subject is what is left out of the intersection of the heterogeneous systems, such as when we exceed the health imperative till hypochondria.

The concept is the intersection of all areas where health imperative works. What remains amid of the whole intersection.

That's all. We wait for you next week (Wednesday, Social Psychology department of the Autonomous University of Barcelona). We hope too your comments and answers to the questions we have posed. 

PhotoCredit: by my self at the seminary.

Incoming my first book! Biosecurity and Biopolitics in the XXI Century

As I have commented occasionally, the last year we achieved the fund by the Brazilian Government in order to write a book with the partnership of some brazilian researchers.

Now, this week ends the deadline to send all the chapters writen by several researchers around the world in order to compile, translate and edit the book. My research group and me perform as writers (one chapter and the introduction) and as editors (compiling, alerting people, talkin with our partners in Brazil..), so in this month (while the congress and other researches was carrying on), we was busy in some related tasks.

But, at last! this month is running out, so we have to finish all the issues soon and move on till other kind of stuff.

Today I have a break, so I want to talk about our chapter in this book, particularlly, I want to post the abstract and some ideas about it.

"In the last two decades, biosecurity has emerged as a key issue in the sociocultural and political agenda of the European Union. Legislation, regulations, protocols, specialization courses, outreach programs and public awareness, hygiene practices, etc. shape a collection of discourses and practices that make of the security of the bios a new field of analysis for the social sciences. 

Some authors have begun to argue that the emergence of such practices and discourses involves the configuration of new control devices and regulation of both citizens and populations. In this vein, it is argued that biosecurity essentially defines a transformation of the old security mechanisms and involves the emergence of new and sophisticated devices where the biological regulation plays a fundamental role. 

In this work, however, based on a case study on the notion of biosurveillance practices and discourses that biosafety implements the European Union, we will set a different argument. We shall argue that the real break that biosecurity suposses is not at the level of definition of the security conception but ​​in a complete transformation of the notion of "life". 

In that sense, we show that the "living" or the biotic acquires a new intelligibility in the game of new coordinates provided by biosecurity. We will argue that this is not developing measures to restrict, control or ban but  the generation of what we have called "regimes of vitality". These are frames or intelligibility's epistemes that dictate how must be the "good-living" or the "living safety", how life must be understood that is worth be lived and how to conceive the relationship between risk and normal."

As you can see, a key concept is "regime of vitality". You can check some ideas about it here in a text writen by Jorge Castillo, Francisco Tirado and Ana Gálvez (Foucault also wrote some about it when he talked about "regimes of truth"). In this vein, what we are seeking is some elments related with biosecurity where we would discuss about if a new regime of vitality about life is being created. When the book was published, I will write some details about it (I hope we continue researching about this interesting term).

As always, I want to share this post in order to discuss some terms, empirial datas, and exchange some points of view. What do you think about it? Do yo know where we can find some documents related with our task?

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Pete Ashton

Some novelties about the blog

Once the hangover's congress has finished, I have to announce some news happened during the week:

First, this blog, Anthropology Of the Bios (AOB), has been fused with the webpage of my research group, called Portraits of the Bios in Contemporary Societies (POBICS, check it out here). In this vein, we think this is a good way to promote both the blog and webpage

because their topic is the same: to analyse and reflect about some current events of bios' management, anthropology, epidemics, etc. In order to power the blog, it has a new look, more minimalist and concrete. We hope you feel comfortable with it and you find easy the access to the whole content.

Henceforth, our website has a new section where the blog is exposed and each post will be updated there too. At the same time, this blog includes the weblink of POBICS and so, you can be informed about our upcoming events, publications or seminaries. Furthermore, we are planning a new project by which all our staff would publish information, discussions, readings, etc; and thus, we will be able to make a daily post. I invite you to visit the website and subscribe for updates!!

In this sense I want to share with all of you we have set a seminary about the Foucaultian course that Deleuze imparted in 1985. The readings will begin next wednesday, 25th in the Social Psychology Department of the Autonomous University of Barcelona; talking about "the visible and the expressible". 

I also remind you can follow us in Twitter (@pobics or my account, @ebaes) and in Facebook (click here). We want to know people in order to exchange ideas, knowledge, points of view, information, etc. so we will be happy in order to get in touch with you!

On the other hand, I want to post the recordings made along the congress, so if the heads of the staff give me permission, I will share the videos of Monica Greco, talking about Participating Bodies: Neuroliberal Governmentality and the Politics of Symptoms; Patricia Clough, about Affect After Neoliberalism: Subjectivity, Bodies, and Sociality; Mari-Luz Esteban, pointing some aspects with The reinvention of politics and claim of vulnerability. Theoretical, political and ethnographic somatizations; Silvia Possoco and The Ends of Affect: Deferred Reflections from the Field; and finally, Jasbi Puar talking about Conviviality: New Methods for No Future.

Finally, this week expires the deadline to send the content of the book we are editing, titled "Biossegurança e Biopolítica no Século XXI", a work where we have invite to some researchers to write a chapter about biosecurity and biopolitics, that will be published in 2016. Our chapter will be called as "What is biosecurity? Bios and regimes of vitality". In it, we will talk about biosecurity as a new focus that creates norms to establish what is bios (in the Agamben sense) and what is not-valuable life within the biotic realm. I will write about it later.

PhotoCredit: Flickr, user Arbyreed