The Living from the Dead: Disaffirming Biopolitics

In A Society That Aims Above All To Safeguard Life, How Might We Reckon With Ethical Responsibility When We Are Complicit In Sacrificial Economies That Produce And Tolerate Death As A Necessity Of Life?arguing That Biopower Can Be Fully Exposed Only Through An Analysis Of Those Whom Society Has “let Die,” Stuart J. Murray Employs A Series Of Transdisciplinary Case Studies To Uncover The Structural And Rhetorical Conditions Through Which Biopower Works. These Case Studies Include The Concept Of “sacrifice” In The “war” Against Covid-19, Where Emergent Cultures Of Pandemic “resistance” Are Explored Alongside Suicide Bombings And Military Suicides; The California Mass Hunger Strikes Of 2013; Legal Cases Involving “preventable” And “untimely” Childhood Deaths, Exposing The Irreconcilable Claims Of Anti-vaxxers And Indigenous Peoples; And The Videorecording Of The Death Of A Disabled Black Man. Murray Demonstrates That Active Resistance To Biopower Inevitably Reproduces Tropes Of “making Live” And “letting Die.” His Counter To This Fact Is A Critical Stance Of Disaffirmation, One In Which Death Disrupts The Politics Of Life Itself.a Philosophically Nuanced Critique Of Biopower, The Living From The Dead Is A Meditation On Life, Death, Power, Language, And Control In The Twenty-first Century. It Will Appeal To Students And Scholars Of Rhetoric, Philosophy, And Critical Theory. Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 The Cost Of Living: On Pandemic Politics And Protests -- 2 Speech Begins After -- 3 Necessaries Of Life: On Law, Medicine, And The Time Of A Life -- 4 Racism’s Digital Dominion: On Hate Speech And Remediating Racist Tropes -- Refrain: And Who By His Own Hand? -- Notes -- Index Includes Bibliographical References And Index. English