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Counter-biopower, counter-governmentality: two angles
| Given the many difficulties in connecting more or less Foucaultian analyses of power relations with other critical political theory, and given the flirtation of governmentality studies with the notion that there is no real alternative to some form of liberalism, the project of theorizing resistance to techniques of biopower and governmentality remains inconclusive. This paper attempts to clarify the possibility of counter-biopower and counter-governmentality by exploring some of the nethermost, limiting assumptions of these two modalities of power/knowledge. The limits of biopower, and hence one possible point of departure for opposing it, are suggested by Lee Edelman's provocative argument in No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. One of the key assumptions behind the notion of freedom as a strategy of government can be brought out by exploring Joshua Barkan's genealogy of corporate personhood. Together these two perspectives help open up a critical space within which to imagine new types of critical social movements.
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