%0 Journal Article 
%A Bergthaller, Hannes
%T Malthusian biopolitics, ecological immunity, and the anthropocene

%D 2018
%@ 2171-9594
%U http://hdl.handle.net/10017/33162
%X This essay argues that Michel Foucault’s original introduction of the concept of biopolitics should be seen as responding to Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie’s notion of a “Malthusian curse” which during medieval and early modern times kept the French population in check. Biopolitics was, in its original conception, the management of human and nonhuman populations, securing them against famine and disease so as to allow for continuous growth. During the second half of 20th century, however, Neo-Malthusian thinkers pointed out that these strategies for immunizing human life against the vagaries of ecological existence had come to endanger the basic conditions of life precisely to the degree that they had been successful—ushering in the new geological epoch we have lately begun to refer to as the Anthropocene. This paradoxical dynamic can be understood in terms of what Roberto Esposito has described as an “immunitary double-bind”: existing immunitary defenses can no longer be dismantled without causing significant harm to human life, yet failure to dismantle them will increase the risk of incurring even greater harm in the future. Such an account, it is argued, yields a more ambivalent picture than the starkly negative views which continue to dominate biopolitical theory.

%K Anthropocene
%K Biopolitics
%K Immunity
%K Neo-malthusianism
%K Antropoceno
%K Biopolítica
%K Inmunidad
%K Neo-malthusianismo
%K Literatura
%K Literature
%K Medio ambiente
%K Environmental science
%~ Biblioteca Universidad de Alcala