Towards an Affirmative Biopolitics: Bureaucracy, Critical Thinking and Prevention

Abstract

This article seeks to re-examine Michel Foucault?s concept of biopolitics in relation to genocide, taking its revision and use by Roberto Esposito (who distinguishes between negative and positive biopolitics) as a starting point, and the political views and critical thinking of Hannah Arendt as our framework. To this end, two historical examples of negative biopolitics will be analyzed ?Nazism (1933-1945) and Argentina?s military dictatorship (1976-1983). These are two cases in which politics takes a turn that transforms the whole political relationship of coexistence in plurality into a friend-enemy relationship that seeks to eliminate the Other biopolitically. In this context, the cases of Adolf Eichmann and Adolfo Scilingo will be especially examined as extreme and paradigmatic examples of a total lack of critical thinking (an anti-political bureaucracy) that enables mass murders (negative biopolitics). In the light of these ideas, I will finally suggest that affirmative biopolitics firmly grounded in critical thinking and collective, political social action can be an effective way to prevent genocidal social engineerings.