ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 charts out some of the first contours of a new biopolitical reality, by which we seek to turn our position into an approach, detailing our rethinking of the biopolitical, theoretically, conceptually, and methodologically framing the empirical analyses that follow. Starting with what Foucault called ‘the problem of sovereignty’ in his later work, we retrace his steps to his early work and return to the question about the ‘modern space of representation’ and its epistemic underpinnings. Drawing from Foucault’s early work, we suggest a perspective on the biopolitical extended to the variety of ways wherein power is exercised through the shared and collective social bodies that enter into new relations in consequence of the bioinformatic reconfiguration of humans and non-human life forms.
