DOI: 10.7256/2454-0684.2021.3.36524

Abstract: The subject of this research is the state as a biopolitical project founded on the principle of government intervention in life of the population. Leaning on the ideas and theoretical intentions of the “archeology of power”, economic and political anthropology, the author examines the genesis of the state from biopolitical perspective, proceeding from the hypothesis of the initial animalization of human presence pursuant to state power, which at breaking point, turns into biopolitical death machine, or thanatopolitics. In view of this, the author reveals the role of ancient state formations as the agents of forced “domestication” of the members of agricultural and cattle-raising societies based on the concentration of human resources and coercive labor as state-forming “technologies”, which allow producing surpluses appropriated by the power elites. The idea of pastoralist power, which emerged along with the first states, identifies subjects to a herd under wardship, treating them as a form of wealth similar to livestock. The main conclusion lies in explication of the biopolitical matrix of state administration, which identifies the subjects of the state with livestock, and the state territory with enclosed pasture. This leads to the parallels between cattle-raising and control over population, which paradigmatically determines the political modus operandi of state power that is implicit in the trajectory of its evolution up to the present day. At the threshold of “evolution” of such administrative paradigm emerge the modern radical topoi of the antihuman – the concentration camps (labor camps and death camps) organized by the model of cattle pens and slaughterhouses.

DOI: 10.25136/2409-7144.2019.1.28662

Abstract: The subject of this research is the Walter Benjamin’s representation on the state of emergency in the context of modern issue of correlation between sovereign power, right and violence. The intention of W. Benjamin consists in overcoming the state of demonic existence, which residue is the right, and liberate human being from guilt, in the virtue of which the natural life is included into the order of right and fate. In his criticism of violence, W. Benjamin attempts to validate the possibility of the existence of violence beyond the limits of right, i.e. “on the far side” of “vicious circle” of the dialectics of violence establishing right, and the violence, supporting right. Methodological framework contains hermeneutic ontology (M. Heidegger, H. Arendt), adhering to the principle of the identity of language, existence and reasoning. The main conclusion lies in substantiation of the original thesis that the genuine state of emergence, marked by W. Benjamin as “divine violence”, is the reasoning process, manifesting as the metaphysical “revolutionary” force underlying the sovereign subjectivity, because the reasoning interrupts the non-reflectable flow of natural life.

DOI: 10.7256/2409-7144.2016.9.20416

Abstract: The subject of this article is the organization of social being in the modern biopolitical society, when politics, taking care for the life of population, gradually shifts from the disciplinary practice the basic model of which is prison,  towards the practices of providing safety and preventing threats. Presumption of danger, potentially assigned after each individual, is accompanied by the implementation of the preventative right of authority and establishment of the permanent emergency rule as the norm of social existence. Under the conditions of emergency situation, the social is reorganized in form of the concentration camp that produces the deprived of rights individuals. The methodology of this research includes the fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger, which is based on the principle of integrity and law of identity of the language, being, and thinking. The main conclusion of the conducted research consists in the establishment of the limit of social and human being, as well as justifies the need for the “ontological turn”; as a reflexive movement from the total objectification of the human presence within the framework of the technologies of biopolitical management towards subjectification, formulated through reason as the topos of human essence and politics.