Kevin Ryan
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781526148612
- eISBN:
- 9781526160959
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526148629
- Subject:
- Sociology, Marriage and the Family
Refiguring childhood stages a series of encounters with biosocial power, which is a specific zone of intensity within the more encompassing arena of biopower and biopolitics. Assembled at the ...
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Refiguring childhood stages a series of encounters with biosocial power, which is a specific zone of intensity within the more encompassing arena of biopower and biopolitics. Assembled at the intersection of thought and practice, biosocial power attempts to bring envisioned futures into the present, taking hold of life in the form of childhood, thereby bridging being and becoming while also shaping the power relations that encapsulate the social and cultural world(s) of adults and children. Taking up a critical perspective which is attentive to the contingency of childhoods – the ways in which particular childhoods are constituted and configured – the method used in the book is a transversal genealogy that moves between past and present while also crossing a series of discourses and practices framed by children’s rights (the right to play), citizenship, health, disadvantage and entrepreneurship education. The overarching analysis converges on contemporary neoliberal enterprise culture, which is approached as a conjuncture that helps to explain, and also to trouble, the growing emphasis on the agency and rights of children. It is against the backdrop of this problematic that the book makes its case for refiguring childhood. Focusing on the how, where and when of biosocial power, Refiguring childhood will appeal to researchers and students interested in examining the relationship between power and childhood through the lens of social and political theory, sociology, cultural studies, history and geography.Less
Refiguring childhood stages a series of encounters with biosocial power, which is a specific zone of intensity within the more encompassing arena of biopower and biopolitics. Assembled at the intersection of thought and practice, biosocial power attempts to bring envisioned futures into the present, taking hold of life in the form of childhood, thereby bridging being and becoming while also shaping the power relations that encapsulate the social and cultural world(s) of adults and children. Taking up a critical perspective which is attentive to the contingency of childhoods – the ways in which particular childhoods are constituted and configured – the method used in the book is a transversal genealogy that moves between past and present while also crossing a series of discourses and practices framed by children’s rights (the right to play), citizenship, health, disadvantage and entrepreneurship education. The overarching analysis converges on contemporary neoliberal enterprise culture, which is approached as a conjuncture that helps to explain, and also to trouble, the growing emphasis on the agency and rights of children. It is against the backdrop of this problematic that the book makes its case for refiguring childhood. Focusing on the how, where and when of biosocial power, Refiguring childhood will appeal to researchers and students interested in examining the relationship between power and childhood through the lens of social and political theory, sociology, cultural studies, history and geography.
Kevin Ryan
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781526148612
- eISBN:
- 9781526160959
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526148629.00016
- Subject:
- Sociology, Marriage and the Family
Chapter 9 poses the following question: might a natality-enhancing biopolitics somehow exist; a life-affirming biopolitics that doesn’t use children as raw material to prefigure contingent and ...
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Chapter 9 poses the following question: might a natality-enhancing biopolitics somehow exist; a life-affirming biopolitics that doesn’t use children as raw material to prefigure contingent and contestable visions of the future? Using Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on ‘natality’, and bringing this into conversation with Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of ‘becoming-child’, and also Miguel Vatter’s work on ‘positive’ biopolitics, this concluding chapter reflects on what it might look like to refigure childhood as a way of reconfiguring biosocial power.Less
Chapter 9 poses the following question: might a natality-enhancing biopolitics somehow exist; a life-affirming biopolitics that doesn’t use children as raw material to prefigure contingent and contestable visions of the future? Using Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on ‘natality’, and bringing this into conversation with Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of ‘becoming-child’, and also Miguel Vatter’s work on ‘positive’ biopolitics, this concluding chapter reflects on what it might look like to refigure childhood as a way of reconfiguring biosocial power.
Miguel Vatter
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823256013
- eISBN:
- 9780823261291
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823256013.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter offers an interpretation of Arendt’s concept of natality as the root of human freedom, arguing that Arendt fashioned this category from within a biopolitical understanding of the ...
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This chapter offers an interpretation of Arendt’s concept of natality as the root of human freedom, arguing that Arendt fashioned this category from within a biopolitical understanding of the predicament of republican politics in late modernity and after totalitarianism.Less
This chapter offers an interpretation of Arendt’s concept of natality as the root of human freedom, arguing that Arendt fashioned this category from within a biopolitical understanding of the predicament of republican politics in late modernity and after totalitarianism.
Miguel Vatter
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823256013
- eISBN:
- 9780823261291
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823256013.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter offers a biopolitical interpretation of current theories of universal human rights as they articulate Arendt’s insight according to which human rights take the form of a “right to have ...
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This chapter offers a biopolitical interpretation of current theories of universal human rights as they articulate Arendt’s insight according to which human rights take the form of a “right to have rights.” The chapter argues that such a cosmopolitan idea of rights cannot be separated in Arendt and others from her republican understanding of rights and freedom, which are ultimately rooted in the biopolitical categories of natality and plurality.Less
This chapter offers a biopolitical interpretation of current theories of universal human rights as they articulate Arendt’s insight according to which human rights take the form of a “right to have rights.” The chapter argues that such a cosmopolitan idea of rights cannot be separated in Arendt and others from her republican understanding of rights and freedom, which are ultimately rooted in the biopolitical categories of natality and plurality.
