Genealogy of Biopolitics: The Biology of the State Cover Image

Genealogia biopolityki: biologia państwa
Genealogy of Biopolitics: The Biology of the State

Author(s): Mikołaj Ratajczak
Subject(s): Philosophy
Published by: Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza
Keywords: biopolitics; state; organism; Nazism; Foucault; von Uexküll

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the paper is to analyze a popular pseudo-scientific discourse in Germany in the twenties that developed an idea of a state as a living organism. The discourse was sometimes named “the biology of the state”. The aim of this analysis is to provide a genealogy of the term “biopolitics” that was first used by a Swedish theoretician of the biology of the state Rudolf Kjellén and to show the influence, that the idea of the biology of the state had on the development of the Nazi biopolitics. The paper reconstructs the main aspects of Michel Foucault’s genealogy of the modern biopolitics and subsequently shows, how the idea of the biology of the state constituted the extreme development of the naturalistic tendencies diagnosed by Foucault in the modern theories of (bio)politics.

  • Issue Year: 2013
  • Issue No: 09
  • Page Range: 299-234
  • Page Count: 35
  • Language: Polish