"Biopower and Societies of Control"

First Annual Meeting of the Society for Social and Political Philosophy: Historical, Continental, and
Feminist Perspectives

To be held in conjunction with the 41st Annual Conference of the Society
for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) at Loyola University,
Chicago, October 10, 2002 (from 9 am to 12 noon)

The term ^biopower^ is almost exclusively associated with the work of
Michel Foucault. In the last decade, however, the significance of the
term and its usage as a suggestive invocation about a fundamental
relation between life and politics has been re-examined and explored by
numerous thinkers (Patton, Agamben, Lazzarato, Hardt and Negri, etc.).While Foucault^s investigation of ^biopower^ is situated within his
analyses of the transformations of power accompanying the rise of the
modern nation state, many recent explorations apply the term to such
varied issues as the politics of AIDS, sovereignty, and the
transformation of labor in global capitalism. The shift of the object of
analysis has also entailed in many cases a profound shift in the
ontological and epistemological grounds of the concept.

Recent work on
^biopower^ brought the concept into relation with methodologies and
approaches that Foucault^s focus on the ^productivity of power^ may have
excluded or could not have considered, such as feminist investigations
into the politics of sexuality, reformulations of Heidegger^s critical
destruction of metaphysics, vitalistic reassessments of ^life^, and
Marx(ist)^s examination of labor power just to name a few.

A similar trajectory could be traced with respect to the concept of
^Societies of Control.^ Gilles Deleuze coined the term in 1990^based on
a synthesis of Foucault and of William S. Burroughs^that was intended to
capture mutations of power relations embedded in processes replacing
those associated with ^disciplinary societies.^ Despite the fact that
Deleuze himself devoted only a few pages to the concept, it too has been
expanded and explored by other thinkers. As with ^biopower,^ this
(re)appropriation has been more than a mere application of the term to
new areas of research; it opened up ^societies of control^ to a
multiplicity of philosophical, political, sociological, psychological,
and poetico-anarchist dimensions.

What are the potentialities of these terms, or rather what are the
potentialities of Social and Political Philosophy ^after Foucault^?
^After Foucault^ in the sense that such social and political philosophy
takes Foucault^s insights seriously but also seeks to go beyond them in
terms of both scope of analysis and philosophical problematic. We are
interested in papers that address ^biopower^ and ^societies of control^
from historical, textual, contemporary continental and multicultural,
feminist, queered, and other perspectives. We are especially interested
in papers that would be more than simply applications of the concepts of
Foucault and Deleuze to specific situations or problems; that is, we are
interested papers that utilize and fundamentally transform the concepts
in question.

THE SOCIETY FOR SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: HISTORICAL, CONTINENTAL,
AND FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES aims at creating a space for investigating, in
multifaceted ways and from a variety of disciplinary and non-disciplinary
outlooks, Social and Political Philosophy. Through meetings, events, and
publications, the Society will open up the possibility of exploring
issues pertaining to Social and Political thought from Historical,
Continental, and Feminist perspectives. ^Historical^ is understood as
encompassing textual, interpretative, and discursive analyses not limited
to Marxist, Hermeneutic, Genealogical, Post-Colonial, and other
approaches. ^Continental^ is understood in the broadest possible terms
as inclusive of the encounters between European, Latin American, Asian,
and African systems of thought and philosophical practices. ^Feminist^
is intended here to include anything that privileges sex, gender, and
queer identities in approaching social and political relations. The
Society will provide a forum for interested scholars from various
disciplines, orientations, and training, to engage in issues in and
around Social and Political Philosophy.