ABSTRACT
Two decades ago, Thomas Wiegele in his seminal work on biopolitics concluded that political science must begin to consider the subjects of its investigation as biological beings with intellectual capabilities. Unfortunately, he was forced to write: ‘At the present state in the development of the discipline, we can characterize ourselves as having ignored an enormous amount of information about humanity and its real nature, that is its nature as it is lived’ (1979a: 145). He goes on to state that because our vision has been narrowly focused down safe, welltravelled tunnels, we have been inattentive to the powerful findings of the life sciences. A decade later, Roger Masters, similarly, concluded ‘the social sciences remain largely untouched by research in the biological sciences’ (1989: xii). Despite the significant work in biopolitics since their writing, in large part their conclusions remain accurate.
