This collective book proposes to re-examine and explore the paradox of modernity through the triad structure of biopolitics, ethics and subjectivation, as it has served as an effective analytic tool for Western cultures (Foucault, Agamben, Negri...). The authors ask themselves if this framework can be tested on as varied cultural conditions as those in Asia, South Asia, Africa, Latin America or Eastern Europe.

This collective book proposes to reexplore the paradox of modernity through the triad structure of biopolitics, ethics and subjectivation, as it has served as a very effective analytic tool for Western cultures (Foucault, Agamben, Negri Coming from different parts of the world, the authors ask themselves if this framework can be tested on as varied cultural conditions as those in East Asia, South Asia, Eastern Europe.

For example, could it help us to analyse the increasing population of migrant labors in the rapidly globalized age, or to account for the multiplied social borders through the migration policy and population control? What might be clarified or blinded if we use (or not) this analytic The texts included in this book have been presented at the Conference “Biopolitics, Ethics and Subjectivation” held at the National Chiao University (Hsinchu,Taiwan) in June 2009.

This book is published in partnership with National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan.

Photography: Lo Huichen, Mémorial Tchang Kaï-Chek, lac Tsé, Taïwan, 2009

Table of content

Introduction

Foucault, Bio-politics and Governmentality
Introduction – Alain Brossat

Power over Life/Power of Life: What is a Non-organizational Politics?
Pheng Cheah

Governing Bodies: Self, Population, Governmentality
Kyunghwan Oh

The Human Pastorate and “la vie bete ”
Alain Brossat

Juridical Rights in the Era of Disciplinary Power and Biopower : Foucault’s Paradox
Philippe Chevallier

Vitalism and Biopolitics
Kuniichi Uno

Foucault: Body, Power, Prison
Martine Deotte

Bio-politics and East Asia Modernity
Introduction - Rada Ivekovic

The Body of the Nation : The Pastorate, the Emperor System and the Society of Sympathy of Japan’s Intellectual Modernization
Naoki Sakai

The Count of Psyche: The birth of bio-politics and bio-ethics in early modern China
Joyce C. H. Liu

Neoliberalism and Recent China: a Critical Review
Yuan-Horng Chu

Bio-politics, Colonialism and Beyond
Introduction - Yuan-Horng Chu

A New Figure of Death and the Technique of Neutralization: the Case of Colonized Algeria
Sidi Mohammed Barkat

Spectres of Biopolitics. The Wounded Movement of Displacement
Eugenia Vilela

Saving “Population” From Governmentality Studies: Translating Between Archaeology and Biopolitics
Jon Solomon

Towards an epistemological revolution Split reason: subject, translation and modernities
Rada Ivekovic

Competing Subjectivities in Mass Dictatorship: Between Self-Mobilization and Self-Empowerment
Jie-Hyun Lim

Vanishing Points

Michel Foucault: a debt of gratitude
Jean-Louis Deotte

Beyond Foucault and Althusser. Theories of Subjection in Classical Rhetoric and Lacaninan Psychoanalysis
Andreas Hetzel