Biopolitics as a System of Thought

Biopolitics as a System of Thought takes seriously Foucault’s claim that biopolitics is the primary technique of government, the means by which the organisation of our social relations operates.The book’s main argument is that there exists a fundamental relationship between thinking and political action - understood as the capacity of transforming our existing social relations. It asks how it could be that while the material conditions of life have increasingly worsened; that we are not lacking in reasons for political mobilisations, and our capacities for effective political action appear to have diminished. Engaging with modern political discussions such as black lives matter and Roe v Wade, Serene Richards draws from jurists such as Pierre Legendre, Yan Thomas, and philosophers such as Agamben, Arendt, Esposito to explore how the same institutions that offer rights protection can easily and without much notice, take them away. She argues that a politics of destitution as opposed to constitutive power could form the basis of such a politics to come - a reappraisal of law, violence and the state to reconceptualise our social relations. One that remains institutional - for it is not a doing away with institutions all together that is in question - and adjacent to the law - for there is no outside of the law.

Serene Richards is Lecturer in Law at NYU London, UK and Affiliated Researcher at École Pratique des Hautes Étude, France.