Life in Excess: Transpersonality and Autonomy in the Age of Biopower

The conference ‘Biomedial Politics in the Age of Digital Liveness’ at Transmediale 2011 hosts a discussion with Roberto Esposito, Beatriz Preciado and Judith Revel moderated by Matteo Pasquinelli.

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2. Panel-discussion
LIFE IN EXCESS – Transpersonality and Autonomy in the Age of Biopower

We need to untie the dialectical circle of power / counter-power in another way and operate within biopolitical thoughts a ‘switch-over’ of a different kind, that does not proceed from deprivation or deduction, but rather from an addition, an excess, a qualitative difference. (Judith Revel)

Biopower is the power over life from its very interior. A life that today is at the heart of new political battles and new economic strategies. That what defines us apparently as an individual and autonomous personality — our cognitive, emotional and relational abilities — is more and more integrated and exploited by new forms of labour. Also our understandings of oneself and others, gender normativity and sexual behaviours, are central to regulation and control. The production of new and old subjectivities become part of new ‘biopolitical’ power configurations. This focus discussion explores the processes of subjectivation as field of resistance and power asymmetry. How can we organize movements of resistance to immaterial and material forms of biopower without necessarily becoming the other of power?

Date and time: 06 February 2011, 14:00-16:00 hr
Location: Auditorium, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
See the whole program here: www.transmediale.de. All the events will be streamed online.

Participants: Roberto Esposito (it), Beatriz Preciado (es), Judith Revel (fr)
Moderation: Matteo Pasquinelli (it)