SPEAKER 1: And this is
from the New York Times.
"The inequalities of wealth have
become inequalities of health.
A middle aged American in
the top fifth of the income
distribution can expect to
live about 13 years longer
than a person in
the bottom fifth--
an advantage that has more
than doubled since 1980."
And then it goes on to say this.
"The United States does not
guarantee the availability
of affordable housing to
its citizens--" I mean,
we know this of course--
"does not guarantee
the availability
of affordable housing, as
do most developed nations.
It does not guarantee reliable
access to health care,
as does virtually every
other developed nation.
And beyond the threadbare nature
of the American safety net
the government has pulled
back from investment
in infrastructure, education,
and basic scientific research--
the building blocks
of future prosperity.
It is not surprising that many
Americans have lost confidence
in the government as a vehicle
for achieving the ends that we
cannot achieve alone."
So I guess my question--
reading this, I was
thinking, America
can't afford a Foucaultian
critique of biopolitics.
What America yearns
for is biopolitics.
What we need is
the biopolitical.
And isn't it the case
that Foucault profoundly
overestimated the timeframe in
which disciplinary formations
would give way to
biopolitical ones?
I love reading
Foucault. But can we
afford the luxury of
a Foucaultian critique
of biopolitics?
Isn't a thing that we need
right now is biopolitics
as a basis of our society?
SPEAKER 2: In direct
response to Europe
to your question,
biopolitics, I think
if I understand
Foucault correctly,
has never been about an
equal and fair distribution
of resources and possibilities.
It's rather about let's
say economically reasonable
management of what is available,
in terms also of illnesses,
epidemics.
But it's also about the
monitoring, the control.
And it doesn't mean that--
the horizon in biopolitics,
it would be really naive,
I think, to think
that its horizon is
an equal distribution
of resources.
And so when I put the emphasis
on this paradigm differential,
on this internal polyphony
within the various paradigms,
I think this could be
useful to conceptualize
what is happening in America
under the proper name Donald
Trump.
Obviously, one could
think that there
is a very strong biopolitical
paradigm that's at work here.
And in constant monitoring,
statistical modes of governing
have not disappeared at all.
Maybe they have simply
shifted from the state power
to the power of the big
no tie national companies,
like Google or mainly American
ones, it has to be said.
So that there is maybe a shift
from this biopolitical kind
of governance from the state
power to another kind of power,
to a global capitalist
power, but the seat of which
is mainly America.
In front of this, facing
this, Donald Trump
is probably the name
of a certain revival
of at least a fantasy
of sovereignty.
And I think that Foucault's
analysis in Society Must Be
Defended is strikingly relevant
to the current situation.
