Biopolitics of Security: A Political Analytic of Finitude(PRIO New Security Studies)

This book is a volume of essays on the Biopolitics of Security in the 21st Century, by Professor Mick Dillon. It is at first of its kind in that no other study currently available covers the same field of research with the same degree of innovation. There is clearly growing attention to biopolitics in general, and the biopolitics of security in particular, beyond international relations and into the social sciences more generally (Geography, Sociology, Criminology, Law, and the Management Sciences). This volume will provide a genealogy of the biopolitics of security beginning with Michel Foucault's original account of the rise of biopolitics at the beginning of the 18th century, and will clarify and further develop Foucault's original analytic of the biopolitics of security. This work is an original introduction to the emerging field of the biopolitics of security, tracking its development into the 21st century, which will serve as an intellectual provocation to researchers as much as it will a pedagogical guide to graduate and undergraduate teachers. This book will be of great interest to students of critical security studies, IR theory, political theory, philosophy and ancillary social science disciplines, such as criminology and sociology.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1. A Political Analytic of Finitude: The Infinity of Finite Government and Rule 2. Biopolitics of Security in the 21st Century 3. Biopolitics, Government and Economy 4. Underwriting Security 5. Pious Economies 6. Biopolitics of Security, Race and War 7. Governing Terror: The State of Emergency of Biopolitical Emergence Conclusion: Acceleration: Advent of the Baroque Katechon

About the Author :
University of Lancaster, UK

Review :
‘No one writing about security issues is as philosophically astute, conceptually innovative, politically attuned, and eloquent as Michael Dillon. Everyone in academic, journalism, and policy communities concerned with security thinking should read Biopolitics of Security.’--Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawai’i, Manoa, USA 'Biopolitics of Security confirms Michael Dillon's place as both the foremost critic and exponent of political theology writing today. Departing from an analysis of baroque artifice as a response to the death of the Christian God, Dillon shows how the retreat of God as the locus of infinity and source of salvation is succeeded by an infinity of endings that reduce individual lives to insignificance and prompt a desperate self-assertion contained by the security state or katechon. Yet he also shows how this stubborn persistence of infinite life also points beyond the baroque theatrical scenario of martyrs, tyrants and intriguers to other ways of living with power. His analyses of the temporal structures of life and power thus fundamentally question the baroque alignments of sovereignty and government that have until now both secured and ruined our lives.’ – Howard Caygill, Kingston University, UK