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A Historical Materialist Critique of “BioPower” in Digital Capitalism |
Ma Junfeng, Zhang Yanqiong |
School of Marxism, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, China |
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Abstract In the era of digital capitalism, rethinking the issue of “biopower” constitutes an important task for us to study “the situation of human life” in political philosophy. As we can see, Foucault puts the “biopower” in a different framework of power analysis and constructs the theoretical narrative of “biopower”, which is later developed into the core concept of the biopolitics theory. However, with the full rise of the digital capitalism, the reality foundation and theoretical background of “biopower” have changed that a digital implicit “biopower” has replaced the physical explicit “biopower”. At the same time, this digital implicit “biopower” also presents a new feature, namely, the endless hidden repressive existence of life. However, the new feature of “biopower” has obscured the function of “care and service” of power, shattering the hope of giving full play to the potential of life and the restoration of free individuality. Therefore, it is all the more necessary to rethink the original logic narrative of the “biopower” from the perspective of historical materialism, and turn our attention to its positive connotations, so that the power dimension of caring for life can be truly revealed in the era of digital capitalism.
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