ISBN : 9782296545458
VITALISM AND BIOPOLITICS
Walter Benjamin speaks of a certain dogma about life in his text "Towards a critique of violence" (1921). Here, the violence to which he refers is, before all else, that against life, that which takes life. In the face of natural or social violence, be it organized or not, life seems so fragile, so insignificant. "What, then, distinguishes it essentially from the life of animals and plants? And even if these were sacred, they could not be so by virtue only of being alive, of being in life. It might be well worthwhile to track down the origin of the dogma of the sacredness of life." (Benjamin 1996, 251). In this text, Benjamin does not go far enough to give a precise response to this question because his problématique leads instead to the relation between violence and law. But here once again Benjamin seems to pose another question concerning life: under what conditions and in what name does the law protect life - or not protect it, abandoning it to the mercy of violence in an exceptional state? Thus Benjamin had already presaged the problematic...