Critical Biopolitics of the Post-Soviet: From Populations to Nations

by Andrey Makarychev, Alexandra Yatsyk Guest Researcher at the I

Overview

This book is a critical attempt to cast a biopolitical gaze at the process of subjectification of Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, and Estonia in terms of multiple and overlapping regimes of belonging, performativity, and (de)bordering. The authors strive to go beyond the traditional understandings of biopolitics as a set of policies corresponding to the management and regulation of (pre)existing populations. In their opinion, biopolitics might be part of nation building, a force that produces collective political identities grounded in the acceptance of sets of corporeal practices of control over human bodies and their physical existence. For the authors, to look critically at this biopolitical gaze on the realm of the post-Soviet means also to rethink the correlation between the biopolitical vision of the post-Soviet and the biopolitical epistemology on the post-Soviet, which would demand a new vocabulary. The critical biopolitics might be one of these vocabularies, which would fulfill this request.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498562393
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	11/29/2019
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.32(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.89(d)

About the Author

Andrey Makarychev is visiting professor at the University of Tartu.

Alexandra Yatsyk is senior researcher at the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Mapping Biopolitical Routes

Chapter 1: Biopolitics Beyond Foucault and Agamben

Chapter 2: Biopolitics a-la Russe

Chapter 3: Europe as a biopolitical space

Chapter 4: Biopower in Times of Post-Politics: Juxtaposing Ukraine and Georgia

Conclusion: The Biopolitical Gaze: Looking beyond the Post-Soviet

Editorial Reviews

Whether or not you know the difference between geopolitics and biopolitics, read this short book for its inordinate theoretical clarity, the luminescent details, and—not in the least—for how it complicates scholarly thought about the post-Soviet varieties of postmodernity.

Georgi Derluguian

This study—in which political philosophy and cultural studies cross-pollinate each other—is a long-awaited attempt at reading the post-Soviet experience beyond the dominant institutional, geopolitical, and ideological approaches of largely Western post-Sovietology. This important undertaking demonstrates the authors’ ability to complicate standard Foucauldian theory into a refreshing analysis of biopolitical changes across a number of post-Soviet countries. Andrey Makarychev and Alexandra Yatsyk combine their efforts to rethink major biopolitical theories with an excellent command of versatile and rich empirical material.

Madina Tlostanova

This fascinating study breaks new ground in the study of critical biopolitics by taking key concepts outside of the Western liberal comfort zone and applying them to the illiberal zone of post-Soviet politics, culture, and society. It not only provides a new approach to the study of Russia and former Soviet countries—such as Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine—but also new insights into connections between biopolitics and illiberal politics in the West. This book is highly recommended for anyone with an interest in political theory, cultural studies, or developments in the borderlands between Europe and Russia.

Paul Patton