Biocommunism and its Role as it Overcomes Biopolitics
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Institute of Philosophy and Sociology Polish Academy of Sciences, and University of Warsaw
Publication date: 2020-09-29
Polish Sociological Review 2020;211(3):301-322
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ABSTRACT
Biopolitics is often understood as a form of power that is exercised over a population, not over people.
Within this paradigm, a population is understood objectively as wealth, manpower, labour capacity, but also demographically
as the object of statistical analysis. If biocommunism is to gain any political significance, if it is to
become not only the result of the birth of biopower but also an active and actual agent of new political devices,
then it must face the problem of “population empowerment.” In this process of empowerment, “power over life”
is to be transformed into “the power of life itself.” In this article, the author tries to develop the idea of biocommunism
according to which life is nothing but the fold of being onto itself. Up to now, we have thought of politics
as what subsists, thanks to the division and articulation of life, as a separation of life from itself that qualifies it
on different occasions as human, animal, or vegetal. For biocommunism, life is a form generated by a multitude
of living forms