2. Bergson, the Void, and the Politics of Life

The term “animism” is at once a fantasy internal to modernity and a semiotic conduit enabling a serious inquiry into non-modern phenomena that radically call into question the modern distinction of nature and culture. Therefore, I suggest that the labelling of people, practices or ideas as “animist” is a strategic one. I also raise the question if animism can help to solve the modern ecological crisis that allegedly stems from the nature-culture divide. In particular, animism makes it possible to recognize personhood in non-humans, thus creating moral relationships with the non-human world. A number of scholars and activists identify animism as respect for all living beings and as intimate relationships with nature and its spirits. However, this argument still presupposes the fixity of the ontological status of beings as alive or persons. A different view of animism highlights concepts of fluid and unstable persons that emerge from ongoing communicative processes. I argue that the kind of attentiveness that drives fluid personhood may be supportive of a politics of life that sees relationships with non-humans in terms of moral commitment.

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Medicalizzazione e biomedicalizzazione rivisitate: tecno-scienze e trasformazioni di salute, malattia e biomedicina

SALUTE E SOCIETÀ ◽

10.3280/ses2009-002014 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 223-257

Author(s):

Adele E. Clarke ◽

Janet K. Shim

Keyword(s):

Medical Sociology ◽

Future Research ◽

Health Politics ◽

Recent Scholarship ◽

Life Itself ◽

History Of ◽

Definition Of ◽

Politics Of Life

- In this article, we review the history of medicalization theory and then offer a historicized definition of biomedicalization. We consider the relationships between biomedicalization and other contemporary theorizing, seeking in particular to situate the concept explicitly in relation to recent scholarship on the politics of life itself. We discuss how biomedicalization processes dovetail with such politics of life as they are engaged individually, collectively, and at the level of population, including issues of bioeconomy, biocapital, citizenship and enhancement. We then address and respond to several critiques of biomedicalization theory, that question its newness, omnipresence, and determinism. In conclusion, we discuss the relations among medicalization, biomedicalization and medical sociology and offer directions for future research.Keywords: biomedicalization, medicalization, technoscience, health, politics of life, optimization.Parole chiave: biomedicalizzazione, medicalizzazione, tecnoscienza, salute, politica della vita, ottimizzazione.

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Travesti Sex Workers’ Bodily Experiences and the Politics of Life and Death

Brazilian 'Travesti' Migrations ◽

10.1007/978-3-319-77101-4_6 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 139-161

Author(s):

Julieta Vartabedian

Keyword(s):

Sex Workers ◽

Life And Death ◽

Bodily Experiences ◽

Politics Of Life

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Revisiting Clones : Change and the Politics of Life

How Literature Changes the Way We Think ◽

10.5040/9781472542465.ch-003 ◽

2015 ◽

Keyword(s):

Politics Of Life

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As If That Look Must Be the Last

Last Things ◽

10.5422/fordham/9780823279548.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jacques Khalip

Keyword(s):

The Third ◽

The World ◽

End Of The World ◽

As If ◽

Politics Of Life

The final chapter reads the third-to-last line of Shelley’s The Triumph of Life, “as if that look must be the last,” as an aside that asks what occurs after that last look. In a post-Waterloo poem that imagines a hallucinatory end-of-the-world scenario amidst several last things, including a kiss, Shelley explores the adjacencies opened up by his unfinished late piece. Drawing on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Julie, an illustration from that book by Nicolas Monsiau, and a photograph by Peter Hujar, Shelley’s poetic experiment is characterized as tacitly queer insofar as it refuses to endorse a normative politics of life, and imagines bodies and pleasures as scintillatingly regressive, inoperative, and disappearing.

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