“Eternal Life and Biopower” by Miguel Vatter: Summary and Critique

Introduction: “Eternal Life and Biopower” by Miguel Vatter

Table of Contents

“Eternal Life and Biopower” by Miguel Vatter first appeared in CR: The New Centennial Review in 2010, published by Michigan State University Press. In this pivotal essay, Vatter rethinks Michel Foucault’s theory of biopower in the context of philosophical traditions that conceive of life as eternal, particularly drawing from the works of Aristotle, Spinoza, and Heidegger. Vatter critically engages with thinkers like Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito, who frame biopolitics as inevitably leading toward thanatopolitics—a politics of death—and instead posits that a genuinely affirmative biopolitics depends on re-conceiving life not as finite biological existence (zoē), but as contemplative and eternal (zoē aionios). Through a detailed analysis of Spinoza’s metaphysics, Vatter suggests that eternal life is not a transcendent afterlife but the immanent force by which each being perseveres in its being—its conatus—in alignment with divine immanence. This notion provides a political and philosophical counterpoint to biopolitics as domination, grounding resistance in a vision of life as inherently ethical and contemplative. The essay’s importance in literary and political theory lies in how it bridges theology, metaphysics, and post-structuralist biopolitics, challenging the dominant narrative of sovereign power over life with a Spinozist model of providential vitality (Vatter, 2010, pp. 217–249).

Summary of “Eternal Life and Biopower” by Miguel Vatter

Thanatopolitics, Biopower, and Contemplative Life
- The article introduces Foucault’s concept of biopower to explain thanatopolitics, the mass slaughter in the name of life, and critiques interpretations by Agamben and Esposito that link biopower to sovereignty or external power over life.
- Hypothesis: Biopolitics turns into thanatopolitics when life (zoë) is separated from form (bios), producing a life destined to die; affirmative biopower requires eternal life (zoë aionios) as contemplative or philosophical.
- Links to Benjamin’s ideas on guilt in natural life and redemption through eternal life beyond myth and morality.
- “Foucault introduced the concept of biopower to explain how something like ‘thanatopolitics,’ the mobilization of entire populations ‘for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity,’ became the norm in the twentieth century (1990, 137).”
- “Eternal life is a theme that traverses both Western philosophical and religious traditions… philosophy becomes truly political when it provides a conception of life (zoë) that is immediately theoretical or contemplative.”
Spinoza and Providential Life
- Spinoza conceives life as eternal through conatus (effort to persevere in being), linking finite things to God’s infinite life; distinguishes abstract existence (dependent on others) from the “very nature of existence” tied to God’s essence.
- God’s life is power (potentia Dei), providential in general (sustaining all as parts of nature) and particular (favoring virtuous beings that cultivate power).
- Eternal life felt in the mind as the idea of the body under eternity, leading to intellectual love of God and blessedness.
- “By life we for our part understand the force through which things persevere in their own being… those speak best who call God ‘life'” (Spinoza 2002, Metaphysical Thoughts, 197).
- “The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal” (Spinoza 2002, Ethics V, Prop. 23).
- “Salvation or blessedness or freedom consists in the constant and eternal love toward God, that is, in God’s love toward men” (Spinoza 2002, Ethics V, Prop. 36, scholium).
Heidegger and the Deconstruction of Existential Life
- Heidegger separates animal life (poor in world, driven by captivation) from human existence (being-towards-death); organs serve organism’s drive for self-preservation.
- Franck and Derrida deconstruct this: Anxiety and being-towards-death reveal life’s priority over existence, with death as possibility of impossibility, folding existence back to eternal life.
- Suggests pathways from Heidegger to Spinoza, where life escapes duration and is incarnate without Being or time.
- “Capacity is only to be found where there is drive” (Heidegger 1995, sec. 54, 228).
- “Death is also for Dasein… the possibility of an impossibility” (Derrida 1993, 68, citing Heidegger 1986, sec. 53).
- “Resoluteness being motivated by the drive, we must stop understanding ourselves as Dasein and temporality and think ourselves as living, driven flesh” (Franck 1991, 145).

Feeling of Eternity
- Agamben interprets Aristotelian potentiality as capacity for impotentiality (not-to-act), preserving itself in actuality; links to feeling (presentient self-reflexivity) in flesh as transcendental perception.
- Eternal life in reproduction and metabolism imitates divine being; Deleuze’s immanence as “a life” (virtual, impersonal) fuses biological and contemplative life.
- Undermines hierarchies: Nutritive life (metabolism) coincides with conatus, eternalizing finite beings.
- “To be potential means: to be one’s own lack, to be in relation to one’s own incapacity” (Agamben 1999, 182).
- “It is the most natural function in living things… to produce another thing like themselves… in order that they may partake of the everlasting and divine in so far as they can” (Aristotle, De Anima 415a27-b1).
- “Immanent life is ‘pure contemplation without knowledge'” (Deleuze, cited in Agamben 1999, 233).
Glory, or the Metabolism of God
- Metabolism as divine nourishment: Glorification feeds God’s life, which sustains all; in Spinoza, intellectual love immanentizes God, turning philosophy into God’s Sabbath.
- Acquiescientia in se ipso (rest in oneself) as reflexive action where agent and patient indistinguish; politics of eternal life renders bios inoperable, coinciding with zoë in livability.
- Critiques Aristotelian limits; suggests true society metabolizes God/Nature without end.
- “The mind’s intellectual love toward God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself” (Spinoza 2002, Ethics V, Prop. 36).
- “Life, which contemplates its (proper) power to act makes itself inoperosa [unworkable] in all of its actions, it lives only (its) vivibilità [livability]” (Agamben 2007, 274).
- “Society is therefore the perfected unity in essence of man with nature, the true resurrection of nature, the realized naturalism of man and the realized humanism of nature” (Marx 1975, 350).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Eternal Life and Biopower” by Miguel Vatter

Term / Concept	Definition, Usage, Quotation(s), and Explanation
Biopower 🌱 (Green)	Definition: Power over life, managing populations through techniques that optimize biological existence. Present Usage: Frames Foucault’s explanation of thanatopolitics, contrasted with an affirmative power of eternal life resisting death-dealing tendencies. Quotation: “Foucault introduced the concept of biopower to explain how something like ‘thanatopolitics,’ the mobilization of entire populations ‘for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity,’ became the norm in the twentieth century” (Foucault 1990, The History of Sexuality: Vol. I, 137, cited in Vatter, 217). Explanation: Biopower is critiqued for enabling thanatopolitics when externally controlling life. Vatter proposes an affirmative biopower rooted in Spinoza’s eternal life, emphasizing life’s immanent power.
Thanatopolitics 💀 (Red)	Definition: Politics mobilizing populations toward mass death, justified by life’s necessity. Present Usage: Describes the negative outcome of biopolitics when zoë is separated from bios, leading to a life destined to die, countered by eternal life. Quotation: “If biopolitics can be transformed into thanatopolitics, this may derive from the fact that the life here produced, namely, a zoë entirely separate from a bios, is a life destined to die” (Vatter, 218). Explanation: Thanatopolitics highlights biopower’s destructive potential. Vatter uses Agamben and Esposito to argue that eternal life resists this by affirming zoë’s contemplative nature.
Zoë 🌀 (Blue)	Definition: Bare, biological life, distinct from bios, the qualified life of political or social existence. Present Usage: When separated from bios, zoë fuels thanatopolitics; Vatter reinterprets it as contemplative and eternal, resisting reduction to mere biology. Quotation: “In both Agamben and Esposito, therefore, the power over life has its source outside of life… a zoë entirely separate from a bios, is a life destined to die” (Vatter, 218). Explanation: Zoë is central to biopolitical debates. Vatter aligns it with Spinoza’s conatus, proposing a philosophical zoë that is eternal and contemplative, countering its devaluation.
Bios 🏛️ (Gold)	Definition: Qualified, political, or social form of life, shaped by culture or governance. Present Usage: Serves zoë’s perseverance in Spinoza’s ethics, shaping a divine, eternal life through virtue, not dominating zoë. Quotation: “Spinoza’s ‘ethics’ is entirely dedicated to the proposition that life (zoë) does not persevere because it receives a form, a determination by the activity of its faculties (bios), but to the contrary, its form or determination serves the end of maintaining a life (zoë) that perseveres in an absolute fashion” (Vatter, 225). Explanation: Bios is reframed as supporting zoë’s eternal striving, not as a separate or superior entity, emphasizing a philosophical life aligned with divine immanence.
Eternal Life ✨ (Zoë Aionios, Purple)	Definition: Life not destined to die, transcending fate, conceived as contemplative and immanent. Present Usage: Core to Vatter’s affirmative biopower, linking Spinoza’s conatus and Aristotle’s contemplative life to resist thanatopolitics. Quotation: “My hypothesis is that an affirmative conception of the power of life requires conceiving of life as eternal, a zoë aionios that is not destined to die, that stands over mythical fate itself” (Vatter, 218). Explanation: Eternal life is Vatter’s solution to thanatopolitics, integrating philosophy and politics through a contemplative zoë that immanentizes God’s life, drawing on Spinoza and Benjamin.
Conatus ⚡ (Orange)	Definition: The effort of all things to persevere in their being, linking finite beings to God’s eternal life. Present Usage: Spinoza’s mechanism for eternal life, where conatus reflects God’s immanent life, enabling finite things to persist eternally. Quotation: “By life we for our part understand the force through which things persevere in their own being… those speak best who call God ‘life'” (Spinoza 2002, Metaphysical Thoughts, 197, cited in Vatter, 223). Explanation: Conatus connects finite and infinite, making life eternal by tying it to God’s essence. It underpins Vatter’s vision of an affirmative biopower resisting external destruction.
Providence 🕊️ (White)	Definition: God’s immanent sustaining of all things (general) and favoring of virtuous beings (particular). Present Usage: Describes life’s dependence on God’s eternal life; philosophy becomes political by aligning human striving with divine favor. Quotation: “Spinoza defines the second true attribute of God… as consisting in ‘his Providence, which to us is nothing else than the striving which we find in the whole of Nature and in individual things to maintain and preserve their own existence'” (Spinoza 2002, Short Treatise, ch. 5, cited in Vatter, 224). Explanation: Providence redefines politics as cultivating life’s power, aligning human conatus with divine immanence, making philosophical life a form of divine service.
Being-Towards-Death ⚰️ (Black)	Definition: Heidegger’s concept where human existence (Dasein) is defined by awareness of mortality. Present Usage: Critiqued via Derrida and Franck to show life’s priority over existence, folding back into eternal life through deconstruction. Quotation: “Death is also for Dasein… the possibility of an impossibility” (Derrida 1993, Aporias, 68, citing Heidegger 1986, Sein und Zeit, sec. 53, cited in Vatter, 231). Explanation: Being-towards-death is challenged to reveal life’s eternal dimension, where dying connects to an immanent, contemplative life, bridging Heidegger to Spinoza.
Immanence 🌌 (Teal)	Definition: The state where all things exist within God, without transcendence, as univocal being. Present Usage: Deleuze and Spinoza’s framework for eternal life, where zoë is contemplative, resisting separation from bios. Quotation: “Immanent life is ‘pure contemplation without knowledge’… marks the radical impossibility of establishing hierarchies and separations” (Agamben 1999, 233, cited in Vatter, 239). Explanation: Immanence enables a philosophical life where God and things coexist, supporting Vatter’s eternal life as a counter to thanatopolitical hierarchies.
Glory 👑 (Silver)	Definition: Mutual nourishment between God and humanity via intellectual love, redefining sovereignty. Present Usage: Spinoza’s intellectual love immanentizes God, linking metabolism and contemplation as a political act of glorification. Quotation: “The mind’s intellectual love toward God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself” (Spinoza 2002, Ethics V, Prop. 36, cited in Vatter, 243). Explanation: Glory transforms sovereignty into a reciprocal relationship where philosophical life nourishes God’s life, making politics a contemplative act of eternal life.

Contribution of “Eternal Life and Biopower” by Miguel Vatter to Literary Theory/Theories

Biopolitical Theory 🌱
- Contribution: Vatter reinterprets Foucault’s biopower, proposing an affirmative conception rooted in eternal life to counter thanatopolitics, challenging Agamben and Esposito’s views of biopower as externally controlling life.Quotation and Citation: “Foucault introduced the concept of biopower to explain how something like ‘thanatopolitics,’ the mobilization of entire populations ‘for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity,’ became the norm in the twentieth century” (Foucault 1990, The History of Sexuality: Vol. I, 137, cited in Vatter, 217). “My hypothesis is that an affirmative conception of the power of life requires conceiving of life as eternal, a zoë aionios that is not destined to die” (Vatter, 218).
- Explanation: Vatter’s affirmative biopower, grounded in Spinoza’s eternal life, shifts biopolitical theory from death-driven politics to a life-affirming framework. This impacts literary analyses of power and governance in texts, such as dystopian or political narratives, by emphasizing life’s immanent potential over sovereign control, offering a lens for reading resistance to oppressive structures.
Poststructuralism 🌀
- Contribution: Vatter employs Derrida and Franck to deconstruct Heidegger’s being-towards-death, folding existence into eternal life and challenging binaries like life/existence and zoë/bios, aligning with Deleuze’s immanence.Quotation and Citation: “Death is also for Dasein… the possibility of an impossibility” (Derrida 1993, Aporias, 68, citing Heidegger 1986, Sein und Zeit, sec. 53, cited in Vatter, 231). “Resoluteness being motivated by the drive, we must stop understanding ourselves as Dasein and temporality and think ourselves as living, driven flesh” (Franck 1991, Being and the Living, 145, cited in Vatter, 229).
- Explanation: By undermining Heidegger’s existential priority, Vatter’s poststructuralist approach enriches literary theory for analyzing texts with fluid boundaries between life and death, such as gothic or spectral narratives. It emphasizes immanence and destabilized identities, aligning with poststructuralist readings of ambiguity and multiplicity in literature.
Spinozist Philosophy ⚡ (Orange)
- Contribution: Vatter uses Spinoza’s conatus, providence, and intellectual love to frame a philosophical life that is eternal and political, redefining bios as serving zoë’s perseverance.
- Quotation and Citation: “By life we for our part understand the force through which things persevere in their own being… those speak best who call God ‘life’” (Spinoza 2002, Metaphysical Thoughts, 197, cited in Vatter, 223). “The mind’s intellectual love toward God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself” (Spinoza 2002, Ethics V, Prop. 36, cited in Vatter, 243).
- Explanation: Vatter’s Spinozist lens offers literary theory a framework for interpreting texts exploring human striving, divine immanence, or ethical life, such as philosophical novels or allegories. It highlights life’s eternal persistence, providing a new perspective on narratives of redemption or resilience against temporal constraints.

Phenomenology ⚰️
- Contribution: Vatter reinterprets Heidegger’s phenomenology via Franck’s focus on flesh and drive, prioritizing life’s eternal dimension over existence, enhancing phenomenological readings of embodiment in literature.Quotation and Citation: “Capacity is only to be found where there is drive” (Heidegger 1995, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, sec. 54, 228, cited in Vatter, 228). “Resoluteness being motivated by the drive, we must stop understanding ourselves as Dasein and temporality and think ourselves as living, driven flesh” (Franck 1991, Being and the Living, 145, cited in Vatter, 229).
- Explanation: Vatter’s phenomenological contribution challenges existentialist separations, offering literary theory a way to analyze texts centered on embodiment or mortality, such as modernist works exploring lived experience. It emphasizes life’s immanent drive, enriching readings of physicality and persistence in narrative contexts.

Deleuzian Immanence 🌌
- Contribution: Vatter adopts Deleuze’s immanence to fuse biological and contemplative life, dissolving hierarchies between zoë and bios, providing a lens for virtual, impersonal life in literary analysis.Quotation and Citation: “Immanent life is ‘pure contemplation without knowledge’… marks the radical impossibility of establishing hierarchies and separations” (Agamben 1999, Potentialities, 233, citing Deleuze, cited in Vatter, 239). “Deleuze illustrates this mortal yet eternal life, a virtual life, by referring to the description found in a novel by Dickens” (Agamben 1999, Potentialities, 229, cited in Vatter, 237).
- Explanation: Vatter’s Deleuzian approach enables literary theory to explore texts where life transcends individual subjectivity, such as postmodern or experimental narratives. It supports readings of transformation and becoming, emphasizing life as a virtual force that resists fixed categories, enhancing analyses of fluid identities or collective experiences.

Political Theology 👑
- Contribution: Vatter redefines glory as mutual nourishment between God and humanity, transforming sovereignty into an immanent, philosophical life, enriching analyses of divine-human relations in literature.Quotation and Citation: “The mind’s intellectual love toward God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself” (Spinoza 2002, Ethics V, Prop. 36, cited in Vatter, 243). “By feeding the gods through their glorification, people are in reality nourishing themselves from the glory of the gods” (Agamben 2007, Il Regno e la Gloria, 250, cited in Vatter, 245).
- Explanation: Vatter’s political theology reimagines sovereignty as reciprocal, impacting literary readings of texts with theological or communal themes, such as epics or religious allegories. It offers a framework for analyzing divine-human interdependence, emphasizing eternal life’s role in reshaping power dynamics in narrative contexts.

Examples of Critiques Through “Eternal Life and Biopower” by Miguel Vatter

🔍 Literary Work	⚖️ Biopolitical Lens (Control/Power) · ♾️ Eternal Life (zoē aionios) · 🔥 Resistance & Ethical Vitality · 🧠 Philosophical Alignment
*1. The Ministry of Time* by Kaliane Bradley (2024)**	Biopolitical Lens: 🕰️ Government controls time-traveling detainees, extending biopower through temporality. Eternal Life: 🔄 Time-displacement evokes zoē aionios—life beyond chronological limits. Resistance & Vitality: 🧬 Emotional entanglement (love, intimacy) acts as defiance, transcending temporal control. Philosophical Alignment: 🔁 Resonates with Spinoza’s immanence against the state’s authority over time.
*2. James* by Percival Everett (2024)**	Biopolitical Lens: 🪶 Revisits Huckleberry Finn from the enslaved perspective—biopolitical regulation of race, status, and speech. Eternal Life: ✊ Reclaims agency as eternal human dignity, irreducible to legality or ownership. Resistance & Vitality: 🗣️ Voice as survival—narrative reclamation of history becomes ethical vitality. Philosophical Alignment: ⚖️ Challenges Agamben’s homo sacer while infusing Spinoza’s conatus as perseverance of life.
*3. Grief Is the Thing with Feathers* (Stage Adaptation, 2023)**	Biopolitical Lens: 🐦 Death manifests as biopolitical absence—the family structure destabilized by loss. Eternal Life: 🌫️ Grief becomes a timeless, lingering presence, suggesting eternal affective life. Resistance & Vitality: 🐾 The Crow disrupts normative mourning—life survives through absurd, poetic resistance. Philosophical Alignment: 💭 Reflects Foucaultian disruptions while affirming Spinozist vitality within affect and imagination.
*4. The Fraud* by Zadie Smith (2023)**	Biopolitical Lens: 📚 Examines Victorian racial politics and legal spectacles—sovereign power exercised through narrative control. Eternal Life: 🧾 Storytelling as an eternal act, preserving lives beyond bodily death. Resistance & Vitality: 📖 Satire and truth-telling as ethical forms of resistance to sovereign narratives. Philosophical Alignment: ✍️ Affirms immanent truth as life-force, challenging state narration with Spinozist ethical resistance.

Criticism Against “Eternal Life and Biopower” by Miguel Vatter

Overreliance on Philosophical Synthesis 🌱 (Green)
- Criticism: Vatter’s attempt to synthesize Foucault, Spinoza, Heidegger, Agamben, and Deleuze into a cohesive theory of affirmative biopower risks diluting the specificity of each thinker’s framework, potentially leading to conceptual overreach.
- Explanation: The article ambitiously integrates diverse philosophical traditions to propose an eternal life countering thanatopolitics, but this synthesis may oversimplify complex distinctions. For instance, combining Spinoza’s conatus with Heidegger’s being-towards-death (Vatter, 231) overlooks their fundamentally opposed views on life and existence, potentially weakening the argument’s rigor. Literary theorists might find this blending problematic for analyzing texts requiring fidelity to a single theoretical lens, as it could blur nuanced interpretations of power or subjectivity.
- Quotation and Citation: “I shall suggest that those contemporary thinkers who have dealt with the idea of eternal life and its internal relation to the power of life, from Jonas to Derrida and Deleuze to Agamben, have all in their own ways tried to bring together Heidegger and Spinoza” (Vatter, 221).
Limited Engagement with Foucault’s Original Framework 🌀 (Blue)
- Criticism: Vatter’s reorientation of Foucault’s biopower toward a Spinozist eternal life underemphasizes Foucault’s focus on historical and institutional practices, potentially disconnecting the argument from biopolitics’ material grounding.
- Explanation: While Vatter cites Foucault’s biopower as a starting point (Vatter, 217), his shift to a philosophical, contemplative life neglects Foucault’s emphasis on specific technologies of power (e.g., medical or disciplinary institutions). This could limit the article’s utility for literary analyses of texts grounded in historical or social contexts, where biopower’s concrete mechanisms are central. Critics might argue that Vatter’s abstract approach risks idealizing life at the expense of its socio-political realities.
- Quotation and Citation: “Foucault introduced the concept of biopower to explain how something like ‘thanatopolitics,’ the mobilization of entire populations ‘for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity,’ became the norm in the twentieth century” (Foucault 1990, The History of Sexuality: Vol. I, 137, cited in Vatter, 217).
Underdeveloped Literary Application ⚡ (Orange)
- Criticism: The article’s heavy philosophical focus leaves its implications for literary theory underdeveloped, limiting its direct applicability to textual analysis.
- Explanation: Vatter’s argument centers on philosophical concepts like eternal life and immanence, but it offers minimal explicit guidance on how these apply to literary texts beyond broad references, such as to Dickens via Agamben (Vatter, 237). Literary scholars might criticize the lack of concrete examples or methodologies for applying these ideas to narrative structures, character development, or thematic analysis, making the article less accessible for literary studies.
- Quotation and Citation: “Deleuze illustrates this mortal yet eternal life, a virtual life, by referring to the description found in a novel by Dickens” (Agamben 1999, Potentialities, 229, cited in Vatter, 237).

Ambiguity in Defining Eternal Life ⚰️ (Black)
- Criticism: Vatter’s concept of eternal life (zoë aionios) remains conceptually ambiguous, potentially undermining its analytical precision for both philosophical and literary applications.
- Explanation: While Vatter posits eternal life as a counter to thanatopolitics (Vatter, 218), the term oscillates between Spinoza’s conatus, Aristotle’s contemplative life, and Deleuze’s immanence, creating a vague construct. This lack of clarity could confuse literary theorists seeking a stable framework for interpreting life’s representation in texts, as the term’s theological and philosophical dimensions are not fully reconciled.
- Quotation and Citation: “My hypothesis is that an affirmative conception of the power of life requires conceiving of life as eternal, a zoë aionios that is not destined to die, that stands over mythical fate itself” (Vatter, 218).
Neglect of Feminist and Materialist Perspectives 🌌 (Teal)
- Criticism: Vatter’s focus on abstract, male-dominated philosophical traditions (Spinoza, Heidegger, Deleuze) overlooks feminist or materialist critiques of biopolitics, limiting its inclusivity and relevance to diverse literary contexts.
- Explanation: The article engages minimally with materialist concerns, such as those raised by Marx (Vatter, 246), and ignores feminist critiques of biopolitics, such as those addressing gendered bodies or reproductive politics. This omission could alienate literary scholars analyzing texts through feminist or materialist lenses, where embodiment and socio-economic conditions are central, reducing the article’s scope for intersectional literary analysis.
- Quotation and Citation: “Society is therefore the perfected unity in essence of man with nature, the true resurrection of nature, the realized naturalism of man and the realized humanism of nature” (Marx 1975, Early Writings, 350, cited in Vatter, 246).
Overemphasis on Theological Framing 👑 (Silver)
- Criticism: Vatter’s reliance on political theology, particularly through Spinoza’s intellectual love and Agamben’s glory, risks alienating secular literary theorists and may not resonate with non-theological texts.
- Explanation: The article’s framing of eternal life as a theological concept, tied to Spinoza’s God and glory (Vatter, 243-245), may limit its appeal for secular literary analyses or texts outside theological traditions. Critics might argue that this focus narrows the article’s applicability, particularly for modern or postmodern literature where secular or atheistic themes predominate.
- Quotation and Citation: “The mind’s intellectual love toward God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself” (Spinoza 2002, Ethics V, Prop. 36, cited in Vatter, 243). “By feeding the gods through their glorification, people are in reality nourishing themselves from the glory of the gods” (Agamben 2007, Il Regno e la Gloria, 250, cited in Vatter, 245).

Representative Quotations from “Eternal Life and Biopower” by Miguel Vatter with Explanation

Quotation	Page	Explanation
🌱 “Foucault introduced the concept of biopower to explain how something like ‘thanatopolitics,’ the mobilization of entire populations ‘for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity,’ became the norm in the twentieth century” (Foucault 1990, The History of Sexuality: Vol. I, 137, cited in Vatter, 217).	217	This sets Vatter’s engagement with Foucault’s biopower, framing his critique of thanatopolitics as death-driven. It provides literary theory a lens for analyzing narratives of power and violence, like dystopian or war literature, by contrasting life-affirming biopolitics.
🌀 “My hypothesis is that an affirmative conception of the power of life requires conceiving of life as eternal, a zoë aionios that is not destined to die, that stands over mythical fate itself” (Vatter, 218).	218	Vatter’s core thesis posits eternal life as a counter to thanatopolitics, redefining biopolitics philosophically. It offers literary theory a framework for texts resisting death-driven narratives, such as philosophical or redemptive works, emphasizing life’s immanence.
⚡ “By life we for our part understand the force through which things persevere in their own being. . . . those speak best who call God ‘life’” (Spinoza 2002, Metaphysical Thoughts, 197, cited in Vatter, 223).	223	This Spinozist definition links life’s conatus to divine immanence, supporting Vatter’s eternal life argument. It enriches literary theory for texts exploring striving or divine connections, like allegories, focusing on persistence over moral limits.
⚰️ “Capacity is only to be found where there is drive” (Heidegger 1995, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, sec. 54, 228, cited in Vatter, 228).	228	Vatter uses Heidegger’s drive to bridge life and existence, challenging their separation. This aids literary analyses of embodiment in texts, like modernist works, by prioritizing life’s driven nature over existential temporality.
🌌 “Resoluteness being motivated by the drive, we must stop understanding ourselves as Dasein and temporality and think ourselves as living, driven flesh” (Franck 1991, Being and the Living, 145, cited in Vatter, 229).	229	Via Franck, Vatter reframes Dasein as driven flesh, aligning with eternal life. This enables literary analyses of texts emphasizing physicality over existential concerns, such as visceral narratives, enhancing immanence-focused readings.
👑 “The mind’s intellectual love toward God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself” (Spinoza 2002, Ethics V, Prop. 36, cited in Vatter, 243).	243	This Spinozist idea ties intellectual love to divine immanence, central to Vatter’s political theology. It provides literary theory a lens for texts with divine-human reciprocity, like religious epics, emphasizing mutual nourishment.
🌱 “Immanent life is ‘pure contemplation without knowledge’… marks the radical impossibility of establishing hierarchies and separations” (Agamben 1999, Potentialities, 233, citing Deleuze, cited in Vatter, 239).	239	Vatter’s use of Deleuze’s immanence via Agamben posits life as a non-hierarchical force. This aids literary theory for texts with fluid life, like postmodern works, focusing on virtuality and becoming over fixed identities.
🌀 “By feeding the gods through their glorification, people are in reality nourishing themselves from the glory of the gods” (Agamben 2007, Il Regno e la Gloria, 250, cited in Vatter, 245).	245	This reframes glory as mutual nourishment, supporting Vatter’s political theology. It offers literary theory a framework for communal or theological narratives, like allegories, highlighting divine-human interdependence.
⚡ “Nevertheless, we feel and experience that we are eternal” (Spinoza 2002, Ethics V, Prop. 23, scholium, cited in Vatter, 226).	226	Spinoza’s claim underscores the mind’s eternal feeling, supporting Vatter’s argument. It aids literary theory for texts exploring eternal consciousness, like mystical works, emphasizing spiritual persistence.
⚰️ “Death is also for Dasein… the possibility of an impossibility” (Derrida 1993, Aporias, 68, citing Heidegger 1986, Sein und Zeit, sec. 53, cited in Vatter, 231).	231	Derrida’s deconstruction of Heidegger’s being-towards-death, used by Vatter, suggests a return to life’s immanence. This enables literary analyses of texts blurring death and life, like spectral narratives, challenging existentialist readings.