Deadline: January 15, 2021
We invite proposals for a special issue of Russian Literature dedicated to Cultural Biopolitics in Modern Russia.
The term “biopolitics” was coined by Michel Foucault to describe a historical shift that took place in the 17th and 18th centuries, when an earlier concept of sovereignty, grounded in the power to decide when “to take life or let live,” was replaced by one determined by the state’s power “to foster life or disallow it to the point of death.” With the emergence of liberal democracy and modern capitalism, new forms of governmentality appeared that centered on the administration of bodies at the level of the population. From government funded programs to increase birth rates to prohibitions on smoking, euthanasia, and certain kinds of sexual behavior, natural life began to be included in the calculations of the state. Sovereign power increasingly became identified with the management of life. Politics assumed the form of biopolitics.
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