Contemporary theories of biopolitics tend to view its relationship with democracy in negative terms. Biopolitical rationalities of government, which focus on the maintenance and optimization of the vital processes of the population, are held to be fundamentally incompatible with the foundational principles of democracy. The synthesis of democracy and biopolitics can therefore only be negative, whereby biopower corrupts, contaminates or even completely eclipses democracy, notwithstanding the formal presence of democratic institutions. In contrast, this article probes the possibility of a positive relationship between democracy and biopolitics, whereby biopolitical government unfolds in accordance with democratic principles, which themselves are rendered biopolitical by being practiced in actual forms of life. Drawing on Claude Lefort’s post-foundationalist theory of democracy, the article elucidates the conditions for such a positive relationship, paying particular attention to the biopolitical conversion of ontological contingency and epistemological indeterminacy that define democracy in Lefort’s view. We demonstrate that such a conversion is made possible by the distractibility inherent in the human condition, its oscillation between states of captivation and boredom, which maintains in every form of life its potential to be otherwise. Contrary to the tendency to view distraction as the malaise of modern democracy, we restore it as the condition of the positive synthesis of democracy and biopolitics.
