Biopolitics and Sovereignty: Toward the Question of the Limits of Juridical Rationality
Biopolitics and Sovereignty: Toward the Question of the Limits of Juridical Rationality

Summary/Abstract: This article questions the key premises of the juridical theory of sovereignty. In this perspective, law is understood not as a legitimacy that has to be established but rather from the point of view of the procedures of subjugation embedded in it. The aim is to avoid the issue of sovereignty and thus to allow the issue of domination to emerge. Instead of analyzing power by means of the juridical system of sovereignty, state apparatuses and social ideologies, it is better to analyze it by means of the methods of domination, the forms of subjugation, and real oppressions. We do not comply with the triple precondition of law, unity and subject, which postulates sovereignty as a source of power and as a fundament of institutions, but apprehend the triple point of view of methods of domination, of their diversity and of their consequences, which make them a foundation of power relations; in other words, we deal with a sociological analysis of the constitution of subjects rather than with the genesis of the sovereign.

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