It is commonly maintained that the perspectives of biopolitics and new vitalisms identify two separate modes of philosophical-political engagement with the concept of 'life' today (Thacker, 2010). On the one hand, positions of neo-vitalisms advocate the generative force of life, by capitalising on the philosophy of affectivity, processes and self-organization formulated in the thought of Spinoza, Bergson and Deleuze. On the other hand, the perspective of biopolitics takes life as fundamentally “politically at stake” and subsumes the domain of biological existence to the interest of political management and control. This latter position is chiefly exemplified in the work of Michel Foucault and has been then taken on, among others, by Roberto Esposito and Giorgio Agamben.
In these premises, the paper tries to reverse this common understanding and to suggest an alternative account that attempts to establish a dialogue between the ethico-political projects of the two approaches. It shows that affirmative openings in biopolitics already offer an alternative idea of immanent life defined by the elements of productivity, performativity, vitality and abundance that can be read in line, more than in opposition, with that presented by perspectives of vitalisms. The study explores this alternative reading by looking in particular at the notions of “integral life” in Foucault (2002), “form-of-life” in Agamben (1999) and “impersonal life” in Esposito (2012) respectively. The conception emerging from these concepts jointly enables to establish the basis for a new politics beyond the constraining effect of biopolitical logics and to envision a different regime shifting from the biopolitical power over life to that of the power of life, in which life is liberated by the annihilating effects of sovereign and governmental power. Ultimately, the paper pursues a two-fold aim. First, it draws attention on new perspectives that could be developed after Foucault’s notion of “integral life”, an idea that is introduced quite late in the author’s work (The Order of Things, 2002) and that remains largely underexplored by the critical literature. Secondly, it intimates that fruitful theoretical potentials could be opened up by attempts to read approaches of biopolitics and vitalisms more in terms of continuity, rather than in opposition. Ultimately, the two partake in the shared endeavour of formulating an alternative account for a politics for the future and for a “coming community” open to all forms of being. By so doing, they radically departs from the categories of territory, governmental power and sovereignty that have traditionally informed the modern political paradigm of the West.
