Биополитиката като изкуство на движенията
Biopolitics as Art of Circulations

Summary/Abstract: This article maintains that if disciplinary technology could be analyzed as political „art of distributions“ of individual bodies in an enclosed space, biopolitical power could be viewed as art (or technology) of circulations. As the case of the French XIXth century intersections of urban planning, public health, medical theories, architecture and engineering shows, biopolitical rationality and technology take place in order to regulate the biological life of urban population through the regulation of the circulation of air, water and human flows in the modern industrial city. One of the main reasons for this transformation being that at that time, public health practitioners and medical doctors considered stagnating air and water as principal epidemiological risks through the production of miasmas. Special attention is given to the historical appearance of artifacts and methods such as modern street planning, paving, drainage, tree planting, etc. which are interpreted as means of biopolitical regulation. These means and methods endure despite the change of medical paradigm and the microbiological revolution which dethroned the miasma as a chief disease-causing agent.

• Details
• Contents