“Biopolitics, Biopower, And The Return Of Sovereignty” by Mathew Coleman And Kevin Grove: Summary and Critique

📝 Introduction: Context and Problematic

• Biopolitics as a Contested Concept:
  • The term “biopolitics” has become widely and sometimes uncritically invoked in diverse contexts.
  • Authors warn against its automatic use, asking “how and why life breaks through the center of the public scene, how and why the State regulates and governs it” (Virno, 2004, p. 81).
• Sovereignty in Political Theory:
  • Sovereignty, though often treated as settled, contains underlying diversity and contestation (Walker, 1993, p. 165).
  • Biopolitics emerges in literature as a supposed “nonsovereign” or “postsovereign” form of power but this is questioned.

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⚡ Key Debates: Biopolitics and Its Differing Definitions

• Multiplicity of Definitions:
  • “Our goal… is to draw attention to multiple competing definitions of biopolitics, and in so doing problematize the term as a catchall category to describe either the ‘nonsovereign’ or the ‘postsovereign’ operation of power.” (p. 490)
• Competing Theoretical Accounts:
  • Contrasts Foucault’s historical and geographical specificity with Agamben’s metaphysical thanatopolitics and Hardt & Negri’s universalist biopotenza.

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🧬 Foucault: Genealogy, Governmentality, and Biopolitics

• Inductive and Contextual Approach:
  • Foucault’s “inductive, genealogical, and time-specific and place-specific use of the concept” (p. 490).
  • “The state is neither a ‘cold monster’ nor a ‘puppet show policeman’, but a time-specific and place-specific way of governing” (Foucault, 2008, p. 4, 6).
• Power/Knowledge Assemblages:
  • “Government is… about the relative durability of regimes of truth in relation to institutionalized practices—systems of power/knowledge” (p. 491).
• Biopolitics as a Modern Technology of Power:
  • Not a dissolution of the state, but a “reconfiguration of ‘state’ power” as an assemblage of diverse practices (p. 491).
  • “Biopolitics itself warrants explanation—a modern technology of government whose contingency on earlier experiments in political and economic governance is the problem to be examined” (p. 501).

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☠️ Agamben: Thanatopolitics and Sovereign Ban

• Critique of Foucault:
  • Argues Foucault neglects death and periodizes power too rigidly (Agamben, 2002).
  • For Agamben, “sovereign power is the ability to hold life hostage within what he calls a ‘sovereign ban’” (p. 496).
• Bare Life and Homo Sacer:
  • “Homo sacer is a life doubly excluded—such that it can be killed without the charge of murder, and yet not sacrificed” (p. 496).
  • Death camps illustrate “the limit form of a racist biopolitical technology” (p. 496).
• Totalizing Vision:
  • Agamben’s threshold “renders all places subject to the biopolitics of the sovereign ban, without differentiation” (p. 497).

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💥 Hardt & Negri: Biopotenza and the Multitude

• Critique of Foucault:
  • Argue Foucault “fetishizes power as a faceless function, and… ignores ‘the ontological substance of cultural and social production’” (Hardt & Negri, 2000, p. 28).
• Biopotenza (Constituent Power):
  • “Biopotenza, ‘the potentiality of constituent power’, as ‘the bios that creates power’” (Casarino & Negri, 2004, p. 167).
  • “The multitude is at its core deterritorializing… a force that undercuts and dissolves any sort of spatiality predicated on boundaries or on territorialized accounts of identity and its differences” (p. 500).
• Universalizing Critique:
  • Hardt & Negri’s biopolitics is “a bold explanation of the social world—it is, categorically, what animates all social life, everywhere” (p. 501).

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🌍 Spatiality and Metaphysics: Geographies of Biopolitics

• Metaphysics of Geopresence:
  • Both Agamben and Hardt & Negri “deploy biopolitics in both metaphysical and metageographical ways” (p. 490).
  • Critique: This risks “finalization and totalization… which conceal ‘the complex geographical palimpsest'” (Sparke, 2005, p. xvi).
• Contrast with Foucault:
  • Foucault “seeks to identify the multifarious logics, strategies, and forces at play that give contextual meat to the bare-bone elements of social life” (p. 501).

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🚩 Conclusion: The Return of Sovereignty and Critical Implications

• No Stable Concept:
  • “Biopolitics should be approached as a site of fervent definitional struggle and disagreement” (p. 505).
• Two ‘Returns’ of Sovereignty:
  • Agamben: Sovereignty returns as a “black hole”—an all-encompassing, formless power.
  • Hardt & Negri: Sovereignty “cannot be thought outside or beyond life”; power is parasitic on the productive potential of the multitude.
• Caution for Theory:
  • The concept’s use in literary and cultural theory should “avoid reduction of complex theoretical traditions to catch-all terms.”
  • Authors argue for “the plurality, contestation, and situatedness of ‘biopolitics'” (p. 506).

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Key Quotations

1. “Let us ask ourselves, then, how and why life breaks through the center of the public scene, how and why the State regulates and governs it.” (Virno, 2004, p. 81)
2. “Biopolitics… is anything but a stable concept and cannot be deployed but in reference to specific thinkers and texts.” (p. 505)
3. “For Foucault… biopolitics itself warrants explanation—a modern technology of government whose contingency on earlier experiments in political and economic governance is the problem to be examined.” (p. 501)
4. “The multitude is a force that undercuts and dissolves any sort of spatiality predicated on boundaries or on territorialized accounts of identity and its differences.” (p. 500)
5. “Agamben’s threshold… renders all places subject to the biopolitics of the sovereign ban, without differentiation.” (p. 497)

🧬 Biopolitics and Literary Theory: Destabilizing the Concept

• Challenges the Automatic Use of Biopolitics:
  • The article warns against the “automatic and unreflective use of the term” biopolitics in literary and cultural criticism (p. 489).
  • Quotation: “We should avoid this automatic and unreflective use of the term. Let us ask ourselves, then, how and why life breaks through the center of the public scene, how and why the State regulates and governs it.” (p. 489, quoting Virno)
• Promotes Contextual, Critical Use:
  • Advocates for careful, context-driven applications in theoretical analysis, not as a catch-all for ‘nonsovereign’ or ‘postsovereign’ power.
  • Quotation: “We think the term is anything but a stable concept and cannot be deployed but in reference to specific thinkers and texts.” (p. 505)

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👑 Sovereignty: Reconceptualizing Power in Textual Analysis

• Re-examines the Role of Sovereignty:
  • Offers a nuanced genealogy of sovereignty as a category, impacting readings of authority, legitimacy, and subjectivity in literature.
  • Quotation: “A number of different presuppositions circulated under sovereignty’s sign… beneath the too often taken-for-granted categorical presentation of sovereignty was a rich and overdetermined diversity of texts and thinkers.” (p. 489)
• Highlights the Return and Complexity of Sovereignty:
  • Engages with how sovereignty re-emerges in both theory and textual politics, rather than being obsolete.
  • Quotation: “If Agamben and Hardt and Negri alike employ biopolitics in order to emphasize the ‘return’ of sovereign power… what results are two very different ‘homecomings’.” (p. 505)

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⚡ Critical Theory: Problematizing Universal Categories

• Against Universalism in Theory:
  • Critiques the tendency to treat biopolitics or sovereignty as universal, ahistorical categories in theoretical and literary analysis.
  • Quotation: “We submit that Agamben as well as Hardt and Negri deploy biopolitics in both metaphysical and metageographical ways.” (p. 490)
• Stresses the Plurality of Theoretical Traditions:
  • Reminds scholars to respect the multiplicity and contestation in theory, rather than collapsing differences.
  • Quotation: “Biopolitics should be approached as a site of fervent definitional struggle and disagreement.” (p. 505)

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🏛️ Spatial Theory and Geographies of Power in Literature

• Spatiality as Crucial to Literary Analysis:
  • Encourages attention to spatial and geographical differences, avoiding abstractions in analyzing literary power dynamics.
  • Quotation: “Their [Agamben and Hardt & Negri’s] shared metaphysical deployment of biopolitics is at quite some remove from Foucault’s geographically and historically grounded investigation of state power.” (p. 491)
• Challenges Flattened Global Space in Literary Texts:
  • Critiques “the drive to finalization and totalization that accompanies various mappings, visualizations, landscapings, and metaphorizations of space in postfoundational theory.” (p. 490, citing Sparke)

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🔬 Theory of Subjectivity: Life, Death, and the Politics of the Body

• Enriches Theorization of Subjectivity and Bare Life:
  • Provides resources for literary theory to think about bodies, death, and subjectivity—especially in readings of Agamben (bare life) and Foucault (discipline and biopolitics).
  • Quotation: “Homo sacer is a life doubly excluded—such that it can be killed without the charge of murder, and yet not sacrificed.” (p. 496)

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🌍 Genealogy and Critique: Methodological Guidance for Theory

• Promotes Genealogical, Context-Sensitive Critique:
  • Recommends Foucault’s “inductive, genealogical, and time-specific and place-specific use of the concept” as a model for literary theory (p. 490).
• Encourages Resistance to Metaphysical Totalizations:
  • Advocates for methodological caution in adopting metaphysical or universalizing frameworks in theory and criticism.
  • Quotation: “For Foucault… biopolitics itself warrants explanation—a modern technology of government whose contingency on earlier experiments in political and economic governance is the problem to be examined.” (p. 501)

🧐 Overemphasis on Theoretical Multiplicity

• The article’s insistence on the plurality and contestation of “biopolitics” can risk a kind of critical relativism, making it difficult for scholars to apply the concept productively in specific contexts.
• Critics might argue that “problematizing” every use of biopolitics leads to endless debate rather than clarifying theoretical stakes.

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📚 Limited Engagement with Literary Examples

• While highly relevant for literary and cultural theory, the article remains abstract and seldom provides close readings or applications to actual literary works.
• Some may critique that the lack of engagement with narrative or textual material makes its relevance to literary criticism less immediately practical.

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🧭 Potential Neglect of Political Urgency

• By focusing so much on conceptual nuance and genealogical differentiation, the authors may downplay the urgent political realities that drive the widespread use of biopolitics, such as health crises, migration, or state violence.
• Critics may contend that the article risks academicism at the expense of political commitment.

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🗺️ Underplaying Local and Material Differences

• Although the article cautions against universalizing biopolitics, some critics might argue it still works mostly at the level of theory, insufficiently foregrounding local, material, or intersectional differences (e.g., race, gender, colonial histories) that shape biopolitical realities.

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🔄 Heavy Reliance on Other Theorists

• The critique of Agamben and Hardt & Negri, while valuable, is heavily mediated through Foucault’s framework.
• Some critics might see this as a Foucauldian bias, possibly limiting the exploration of genuinely alternative approaches to biopolitics or sovereignty.

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🤔 Risk of Conceptual Paralysis

• By problematizing the use of “biopolitics” so thoroughly, the article may leave readers unsure how to move forward analytically or politically with the concept.
• This could inadvertently undermine the value of biopolitics as a tool for critique.

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📈 Lack of Empirical Case Studies

• The article is deeply theoretical and does not supplement its analysis with empirical or case-based illustrations of biopolitical governance, which could limit its broader applicability and resonance beyond theory.