My dissertation explores the significance of biopower to forms of life and language in the contemporary West. Generally defined, biopower is a type of regulatory power that directs and fosters the biological life of populations. Focusing on its differential operation, this project investigates how populations are afforded or denied the attentions of biopower. I argue that the question How does life have language? is an important mechanism of exclusion in biopolitical contexts. By deciding what counts as language and, accordingly, which living-beings are speaking-beings, biopower gives voice to and fosters the lives of some while silencing and abandoning the lives of others.
This project develops fresh interpretations of the work of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and an under-recognized theorist of biopower, Julia Kristeva. In their varied and resourceful writings on contemporary power, these thinkers challenge the distinction between zoe (the life of biology) and bios (the life of language and politics). To map the languages of biopower, this project brings Foucault, Agamben and Kristeva into uncommon conversation. In the spirit of Foucaults history of the present, I examine the mechanisms that separate animal voice from human speech and that divide, in Kristevas words, those who give life (women) and those who give meaning (men). Ultimately, I argue for a connected transformation a biopower beyond the logic of exclusion and a language beyond the logic of sacrificethat opens ways of living and speaking otherwise.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-07232010-134550 |
| Date | 03 August 2010 |
| Creators | Hansen, Sarah K. |
| Contributors | Kelly Oliver, Charles Scott, David Wood, Lisa Guenther, Ellen Armour |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07232010-134550/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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