Biocitizenship: The Politics of Bodies, Governance, and Power
Kelly E. Happe, Jenell Johnson, and Marina Levina
Abstract
This collection expands scholarly understandings of citizenship in an age in which the material body and its health, vitality, and natural and social environments not only create and discipline the citizen-subject, but also provide the conditions necessary for its recognition and political agency. Together, the chapters consider biocitizenship as a unique mode of biopolitical governance, but also as a response and sometimes a resistance to it. Looking closely at the ways in which the body and citizenship interanimate each other, the collection moves away from biocitizenship as a static form of ... More
This collection expands scholarly understandings of citizenship in an age in which the material body and its health, vitality, and natural and social environments not only create and discipline the citizen-subject, but also provide the conditions necessary for its recognition and political agency. Together, the chapters consider biocitizenship as a unique mode of biopolitical governance, but also as a response and sometimes a resistance to it. Looking closely at the ways in which the body and citizenship interanimate each other, the collection moves away from biocitizenship as a static form of biomedical subjectivity or category of belonging and redefines it as a dynamic and essential—sometimes generative, and sometimes limiting—element of biopolitics. The book has three primary goals: to serve as the first multidisciplinary forum on biocitizenship, bringing together a variety of voices from different fields (including voices from outside the academy); to redefine biocitizenship as a broad mode of political action linked to health, bodies, and life; and to critically interrogate both the “bio” and “citizenship” of biocitizenship.
Keywords:
Biocitizenship,
Biosociality,
Biopolitics,
Health activism
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781479845194 |
| Published to NYU Press Scholarship Online: January 2019 |
DOI:10.18574/nyu/9781479845194.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Kelly E. Happe, editor
University of Georgia
Jenell Johnson, editor
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Marina Levina, editor
University of Memphis
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