Economization of Life: Biopolitical Feminism & Chemical Infrastructures
<p>This conversation with Michelle Murphy is divided into two parts:</p> <p>BIOPOLITICAL FEMINISM: The first part introduces Foucault’s concept of <em>biopolitics </em>and applies it to forms of economization of life particularly in relation to female bodies. Paraphrasing Foucault, Michelle affirms that governmental capitalism needs for “some must not to be born so that future others will live more consumptibly, productively in the logic of macro-economy.” She thus unfolds the political history of regulation and ‘marketing’ of reproduction and contraception that organizes such an economization of life at a scale of a population. Further, we discuss Michelle’s concept of “The Girl” as the problematic current vessel of financial investment in the context of imperial humanitarianism.</p> <p>CHEMICAL INFRASTRUCTURES: The second part considers the body as topological, blurring the limits between inside and outside and, following Peter Sloterdijk think of it as a “being-in-the-breathable.” Michelle has been working on the elaboration of the concept of “chemical infrastructures” to think of our era as the Anthropocene: a time when all atmospheres are fundamentally manufactured (deliberately or not) by human activity. Following Spinoza and his approach of the Genesis’s apple, we talk of our ignorance, as humans, of what ecologies really are, and how we can start thinking of them as ethical systems rather than moralistic ones.</p>
Host: Léopold Lambert
Guests: Michelle Murphy
Part of: The Funambulist Podcast