| Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools. |
Biopolitics and Temporality in Arendt and FoucaultInstitute of Political Science, University of Hannover, Schneiderberg 50, D-30 167, Hannover, Germany; k.braun{at}ipw.uni-hannover.de The article demonstrates that Hannah Arendt's examination of modern temporality strongly intersects with Michel Foucault's diagnosis of modern biopolitics. Both observe three key features of biopolitical modernity: the political zoefication of life, a technocratic understanding of politics, and processual temporality which link the project of modernity to the project of 20th-century totalitarianism. Arendt, however, also offers an alternative, nonbiopolitical understanding of politics, life, and time captured in the concept of natality. Built into the concept of natality is the weakly messianic temporal structure of the interval as opposed to processual temporality.
Key Words: Arendt biopolitics Foucault messianic time modernity natality temporality
Time & Society, Vol. 16, No. 1,
5-23 (2007) |
|||