Malthusian biopolitics, ecological immunity, and the anthropocene

Abstract

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 20 th 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. Resumen Este ensayo sostiene que la introduccion original de Michel Foucault del concepto de biopolitica deberia entenderse como respuesta a la nocion de “maldicion malthusiana” de LeRoy Ladurie que durante la epoca medieval y moderna mantuvo bajo control a la poblacion francesa. La biopolitica era, en su concepcion original, la gestion de poblaciones humanas y no humanas, protegiendolas frente a la hambruna y la enfermedad, y permitiendo un crecimiento continuo. Durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX, sin embargo, los pensadores neo-malthusianos apuntaron que estas estrategias de inmunizacion de la vida humana frente a los antojos de la existencia ecologica habian terminado por poner en peligro las condiciones basicas de la vida precisamente hasta el punto de que habian tenido exito—marcando el inicio de la nueva epoca geologica que recientemente hemos denominado Antropoceno. Esta dinamica paradojica puede entenderse como lo que Roberto Esposito ha descrito como una “atadura doble inmunitaria”: las defensas inmunitarias existentes no pueden desmantelarse sin causar un dano significativo a la vida humana, pero fracasar en desmantelarlas aumentaria el riesgo de sufrir aun mas dano en el futuro. Tal explicacion, se argumenta, ofrece un retrato mas ambivalente que las vistas claramente negativas que continuan dominando la teoria biopolitica.