Bare Life, Multitude, Flesh of the World: The Biopolitics as Destiny

Abstract

Some of the most important reflections on biopolitics have emerged within the Italian philosophical culture. In particular, Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Negri and Roberto Esposito have been at the centre of international attention and developed from the potentialities of Michel Foucault’s research in an original way – but not without strong criticisms. Agamben has contributed from reflections on sovereignty and “bare life;” Negri, by distinguishing biopower from biopolitics, and Esposito, by means of the consideration on the inversion of biopolitics into thanato-politics, as well as through the searching of an affirmative biopolitics. These author’s analyses exerted a major influence in the general reception of the subject of biopolitics, being thus a sufficient reason so as to discuss their theses and compare them with Foucault’s and his version of ethics.