Conclusion: On Energopolitics

• Published in: Anthropological quarterly Vol. 87; no. 2; pp. 453 - 464
• Main Author: Szeman, Imre
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research 01.04.2014; Institute for Ethnographic Research
• Subjects: Analysis; Anthropological research; Biopolitics; Biopower; Capitalism; Climate change; Concept Formation; Constitutions; Deaths; Employment; Energy; Energy development; Environmental impact; Fertility; Fossil fuels; Foucault, Michel; Historical Development; Humans; Marx, Karl (1818-1883); Modes of Production; Political Power; Politics; Population; Population growth; Public speaking; Renewable energy; Scalarity (Semantics); Security; Socioeconomics; SPECIAL COLLECTION: Energopower and Biopower in Transition; Species; State power; Success; Technological change; Technological Progress; United Kingdom; France; New York; United States > US
• ISSN: 0003-5491; 1534-1518; 1534-1518
• DOI: 10.1353/anq.2014.0019

Energopolitics implies that we need a different form of politics-and one, of course, with a different aim and which measures its success or failure by different outcomes. By focusing on the processes by which subjects are produced, Foucault offers us an account of the historical development of power that dispenses with a notion of politics in which, at some point, we are fantastically emancipated from the social systems that have made us what we are-free from labor, for instance, as a happy result of technological progress. But if some aspects of Marxist thought- Foucault's bete noire throughout the late lectures-too quickly assign the political to eschatological fate in the mode of the Grundrisse (1993), Foucault's thought tends to avoid the hard slog of the political by focusing on the 'how' of biopolitics rather than attending to its 'why.' The employment of disciplinary power and the constitution of healthy populations have a clear end: the bottom line, the bringing into being a situation of always more, more, more. It is a bottom line of perpetual growth and expansion that is not only unsustainable, but ferociously destructive for all life. By showing us how deeply the twin problems of energy and environment unsettle the 'why' of contemporary power as a result of their challenges to its 'how,' these articles not only contribute to a redefinition of the analytics of biopower, but also offer insight into that most difficult of political projects: the production of new modes of power, the conceptualization of new ways of making subjects, which can be the only hope for this planet we collectively inhabit. Adapted from the source document.