ABSTRACT
Given the pervasiveness of the discourse of biopolitics in contemporary critical scholarship, it’s surprising to discover just how recently this problematic emerged as a key approach to current political realities.In section (1) I want to return to the Budapest School’s initial reading of biopolitics, in which its members interpret biopolitics within a range of political movements that prioritise the value of life over freedom. Taking Giorgio Agamben as the major contemporary representative of biopolitics, I consider in (2) the main features of his account before returning to Foucault’s romantic interpretation of resistance in (3). In the final section (4), I take up Miguel Vatter’s recent proposal for the reconciliation between biopolitics and a critical theory, and his suggestion that the concept of Zoë be accorded a higher profile in critical theory. The intention of my reconstruction is to demonstrate that contemporary biopolitics reproduces the key theoretical and value moves ascribed to it by the Budapest School’s initial critique and that the priority according to the value of life in such visions represents a most serious obstacle to the further consolidation of biopolitics as a potent contemporary critical perspective.
