Book: Foucault on Politics, Security and War

Updated below

Finally! This has been a long time coming but is finally out:

Foucault on Politics, Security and War edited by Michael Dillon and Andrew Neal.

Synopsis from publisher (Blackwell):

This book reappraises the work of Michel Foucault on questions of politics, security and war in light of his recently published College de France lectures. It addresses topical issues such as: the War on Terror, risk, biosecurity and biopolitics, AIDS, racial and ethnic conflict, and the critique of law for a wide audience of scholars in political theory, IR and political science among others. Its focus on more recently translated work by Foucault commends the project as one of trans-disciplinary appeal and importance. As Foucault’s legacy is once more becoming central to debates in heterodox (international) political theory, the volume looks set to become a key reference for future engagements in this vein.”Foucault on Politics, Society and War” interrogates Foucault’s controversial genealogy of modern biopolitics. These essays situate Foucault’s arguments, clarify the correlation of sovereign and bio-power and examine the relation of bios, nomos and race in relation to modern war.

Table of Contents:

Introduction; M.Dillon & A.W.Neal; PART I: SITUATING FOUCAULT; Strategies for Waging Peace: Foucault as Collaborateur; S.Elden; PART II: POLITICS, SOVEREIGNTY, VIOLENCE; Goodbye War on Terror? Foucault and Butler on Discourses of Law, War and Exceptionalism; A.W.Neal; Life Struggles: War, Discipline, and Biopolitics in the Thought of Michel Foucault; J.Reid; Security: A Field Left Fallow; D.Bigo; Revisiting Franco’s Death: Life and Death and Bio-Political Governmentality; P.Palladino; PART III: BIOS, NOMOS, RACE; Law Versus History: Foucault’s Genealogy of Modern Sovereignty; M.Valverde; The Politics of Death: Race War, Bio-Power and AIDS in the Post-Apartheid; D.Fassin; Security, Race, and War; M.Dillon.

My co-editor, Stuart Elden, is here with a piece on Foucault as “collaborateur.” Having read this a few years ago, it would be nice if this was more generally available. I’m also interested in reading the contributions by Valverde and Fassin.

Pricing: fifty quid seems a bit much–guess I’ll have to use the library for this one.

(In the meantime here is a fascinating new historical piece from Stuart on reassessing Kant’s Geography. I continue to be amazed at the breadth of Stuart’s scholarship…)

Update: Michael Dillon, one of the co-editors, has a blog entry with more details.

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