Improper Life: Technology and Biopolitics from Heidegger to Agamben – recently out with University of Minnesota Press. The book discusses, between Heidegger and Agamben, Michel Foucault, Roberto Esposito, and Peter Sloterdijk. Campbell is one of the translators of Esposito, and his relation of Italian to German thought was good. I also appreciated the way Sloterdijk was brought into dialogue with a range of thinkers in continental thought.
Has biopolitics actually become thanatopolitics, a field of study obsessed with death? Timothy C. Campbell argues that a “crypto-thanatopolitics” can be teased out of Heidegger’s critique of technology and that some of the leading scholars of biopolitics have been substantively influenced by Heidegger’s thought. Campbell articulates a corrective biopolitics that can begin with rereadings of Foucault, Freud, and Gilles Deleuze.
Julia Reinhard Lupton says:
Broadening biopower beyond its Nazi encampments in order to build a critique of liberalism, Timothy C. Campbell argues that modern politics captures life through invasive technologies of communication and consumption that promise protection from mortality, disability, boredom, and loneliness. Campbell links mass media and bioengineering to the birth of a global petty bourgeoisie defined by a terrifying lack of distance and the relentless dismantling of community. This compelling, powerfully argued book should be read by anyone interested in the futures of collective life in the age of smart bombs and cloud computing.
There is also a review at NDPR by Ladelle McWhorter.
