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Research The Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture (ICOG) Research Research centres Centre for International Relations Research (CIRR) Chair Group on History and Theory of International Relations Research themes

Beyond the Biopolitics of Development

Modes of Reasoning | Historical Epistemology

Beyond the Biopolitics of Development inquires into the biopolitics of development from the perspective of conceptualising a ‘beyond’ of such biopolitics. The project is informed by the need to re-evaluate both prevailing discourses of development and their existing biopolitical critiques. It approaches the idea of development in terms of its centrality to Western liberalism, arguing that a critique of development needs to account for its embeddedness in the metaphysics of modernity.

Drawing on the works of Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben for a critical reading of development studies literature and policy documents by the United Nations and other relevant agencies, the project shows the various ways in which policies of development are complicit with the political-economic organisation of liberal-democratic market economy. The project’s contribution lies in its critical engagement with the ontology of contemporary biopolitics of development and in its mapping of the conditions of possibility of a beyond of such biopolitics; a beyond conceived in terms of a politics of being as opposed to the biopolitics of life.

RUG investigator involved: Suvi Alt, MSc.

Research themes: Modes of Reasoning | Historical Epistemology

Last modified:22 February 2017 1.56 p.m.