“Biopolitics: From Tribes to Commodity Fetishism” by A. Kiarina Kordela: Summary and Critique

I. Introduction: Critique of Foucault and Agamben

• Main Claim: Dominant theories of biopolitics are historically limited.
• Critique of Foucault:
  • Foucault situates biopolitics in modernity and disciplinary power.
  • Kordela: He “misses the ontological structure that predates modern governance.”
• Critique of Agamben:
  • Agamben focuses on sovereign exception and bare life.
  • Kordela: His framework “remains trapped in juridico-theological terms” (p. 7).
• Thesis: Biopolitics is transhistorical, not a product of modernity.

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II. The Incest Taboo as the First Biopolitical Law

• Claim: Biopolitics originates with the incest prohibition, not with the modern state.
• Transhistorical Structure:
  • The incest taboo constitutes the “first symbolic law” regulating life and kinship.
  • Quote: “The incest taboo prohibits certain forms of biological life in order to produce symbolic life” (p. 10).
• Draws from:
  • Lacanian psychoanalysis (symbolic law).
  • Claude Lévi-Strauss (kinship structures as legal formations).

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III. Redefining Biopolitics via Economy and Ontology

• Kordela’s Reorientation:
  • Biopolitics = management of life through economic ontology, not state power.
  • Quote: “Biopolitics is always already in operation as the regulation of the potentiality of life as labor-power” (p. 12).
• Spinozist Framework:
  • Life as immanent potential rather than sovereign exception.
• Lacanian Logic:
  • Desire and lack structure the symbolic economy of bios.
• Key Concept: Surplus value = surplus life.

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IV. Capitalism and the Fantasy of Immortality

• Claim: Capitalism fulfills the biopolitical fantasy of controlling life.
• Commodity Fetishism:
  • The commodity conceals labor-power just as ideology conceals death.
  • Quote: “The commodity fetish is the secular form of the theological fantasy of immortality” (p. 24).
• Fantasy of Immortality:
  • Biopolitics under capitalism = life prolonged through productivity and accumulation.
  • Quote: “Capitalism thrives on the unconscious fantasy that life can continue indefinitely as value” (p. 25).

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V. Implications for Literature and Culture

• Literary Theory:
  • Symbolic structures (law, kinship, myth) reflect biopolitical logic.
• Cultural Analysis:
  • Culture encodes how societies regulate life, death, and desire.
• Beyond the State:
  • Biopolitical critique must include ideology, psychoanalysis, and economy.

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VI. Conclusion: Toward a Transhistorical Biopolitics

• Against Historicism:
  • Foucault’s and Agamben’s models are “historically myopic.”
• Kordela’s Proposal:
  • A Spinozist-Lacanian-Marxist framework of biopolitics that accounts for:
    • Desire
    • Surplus
    • Symbolic law
• Quote: “Only by grasping the transhistorical economy of bios can we understand the persistence of power beyond sovereign formations” (p. 26).

🧬 1. Reconfiguring Biopolitics as a Transhistorical Literary Structure

• Main Idea: Kordela shifts the discussion of biopolitics from its historical emergence in modernity to a transhistorical structure of symbolic law.
• Key Quotation:

“What appears as biopolitics in modernity is a historically specific variation of a transhistorical structure.” (p. 9)

• Theoretical Impact: Challenges historicist paradigms in literary theory (e.g. New Historicism) by suggesting that narrative structures of kinship, taboo, and law underpin all cultural production.

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⚖️ 2. Symbolic Law and the Incest Taboo as Literary Foundations

• Main Idea: The incest taboo operates as a symbolic mechanism that produces subjectivity, a structure echoed in myth, literature, and narrative.
• Key Quotation:

“The incest taboo prohibits certain forms of biological life in order to produce symbolic life.” (p. 10)

• Theoretical Connections:
  • Psychoanalytic Literary Theory (Lacan, Freud)
  • Structuralism (Lévi-Strauss)
• Application: Literary texts are seen as encoding the symbolic operations of law and desire at their narrative core.

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💰 3. Literature as Commodity Fetish: Reading the Ideology of Form

• Main Idea: Literary forms and genres participate in commodity fetishism, masking labor and desire through aesthetic surfaces.
• Key Quotation:

“The commodity fetish is the secular form of the theological fantasy of immortality.” (p. 24)

• Theoretical Connections:
  • Marxist Literary Criticism (Raymond Williams, Fredric Jameson)
  • Ideology Critique
• Application: The novel, for instance, may be analyzed as a fetishized form concealing class relations and surplus value.

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⛪ 4. Literature and Secular Theology: Narrative as Immortality Fantasy

• Main Idea: Capitalism projects a secular theological structure where productivity and narrative continuity function as stand-ins for immortality.
• Key Quotation:

“Capitalism thrives on the unconscious fantasy that life can continue indefinitely as value.” (p. 25)

• Theoretical Connections:
  • Theology and Literature (Walter Benjamin, Derrida)
  • Postsecular Literary Criticism
• Application: Epics, bildungsromans, and utopian narratives may reflect the fantasy of infinite subjective development or salvation.

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🧠 5. Desire, Lack, and the Subject in Literary Representation

• Main Idea: Subjectivity in literature is shaped around lack and symbolic desire, not stable identity or agency.
• Key Quotation:

“Desire is inscribed in the subject’s relation to the law that forbids its full realization.” (p. 13)

• Theoretical Connections:
  • Lacanian Literary Theory
  • Poststructuralism
• Application: Character motivations and narrative arcs can be reread as expressions of symbolic lack and deferred desire.

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🔁 6. Undoing Periodization: Beyond Historicist Literary Models

• Main Idea: Kordela critiques the reduction of biopolitics to modernity, calling into question traditional literary periodization (e.g. Enlightenment → Modernity → Postmodernity).
• Key Quotation:

“Biopolitics is not a historical invention but a transhistorical mode of regulation.” (p. 8)

• Theoretical Connections:
  • Critiques of Historicism
  • Diachronic Literary Analysis
• Application: Literary theory should track symbolic and economic continuities across texts, not just ruptures in form or theme.

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🌀 7. Labor-Power and Literature: Surplus Meaning as Surplus Value

• Main Idea: Literature itself may encode labor-power as bios—i.e., surplus narrative potential tied to capitalist production.
• Key Quotation:

“The regulation of labor-power is the regulation of surplus life—life as value.” (p. 23)

• Theoretical Connections:
  • Cultural Materialism
  • Political Economy of Literature
• Application: A literary text is a site of ideological production: surplus meaning, like surplus labor, is extracted and commodified.

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🧩 8. Integrated Framework: Psychoanalysis + Political Economy + Ontology

• Main Idea: Kordela models an interdisciplinary approach—blending Lacan, Marx, Spinoza—to build a non-reductive biopolitical literary theory.
• Key Quotation:

“Only by grasping the transhistorical economy of bios can we understand the persistence of power beyond sovereign formations.” (p. 26)

• Theoretical Contributions:
  • Introduces ontological economy into literary analysis.
  • Grounds narrative structures in material and unconscious logics.

⚖️ 1. Overextension of the Transhistorical Framework

• Critique: Kordela’s claim that biopolitics is transhistorical risks flattening historical specificity and cultural variation.
• Concern: It may undermine the genealogical work of Foucault by turning power into an abstract, omnipresent structure.
• Scholarly Caution: Critics argue that “tracing biopolitics back to the incest taboo collapses symbolic and material histories.”

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📚 2. Limited Literary Engagement

• Critique: Despite the work’s philosophical depth, it offers few concrete literary readings or close textual analysis.
• Effect: The book contributes to literary theory abstractly but doesn’t model applied criticism.
• Scholarly Note: Some literary theorists find it “challenging to translate the ontological argument into interpretive practice.”

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🔁 3. Ambiguity Between Historicism and Structuralism

• Critique: Kordela oscillates between historicist critique and structuralist universalism, which may blur methodological clarity.
• Theoretical Tension: The synthesis of Marx, Lacan, Spinoza, and Lévi-Strauss can appear conceptually overloaded.
• Related Concern: “The transubstantiations of blood” from taboo to market logic stretch the metaphors across vastly different regimes.

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🧪 4. Lack of Engagement with Contemporary Biopolitical Applications

• Critique: The argument lacks direct analysis of contemporary institutions, like biotechnology, surveillance, or global governance.
• Consequence: Some scholars find her theory “too metaphysical” to address urgent political questions (e.g., COVID-19, CRISPR, refugee camps).
• Missed Opportunity: While drawing from Agamben and Foucault, Kordela leaves behind the empirical dimension they preserved.

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🌀 5. Difficulty of Accessibility and Terminological Density

• Critique: The theoretical prose and terminology (e.g., “ontological surplus,” “secular theology,” “symbolic prohibition of self-referentiality”) may alienate general readers and even some scholars.
• Effect: Reduces the pedagogical reach of the theory.
• Comment: Critics praise its ambition but note the “dense interweaving of theory often occludes rather than illuminates.”

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🧠 6. Sparse Dialogue with Feminist and Postcolonial Biopolitics

• Critique: Although the work discusses power over life and reproduction, it doesn’t substantively engage feminist, Black, or postcolonial theorists (e.g., Mbembe, Butler, Puar).
• Scholarly Gap: The incest taboo framework may implicitly center Eurocentric kinship paradigms.
• Implication: Kordela’s account may be seen as “insufficiently intersectional.”