Episode 15: What is biopolitics?

In this episode of the EuroStorie Podcast, we get to know Marco Piasentier, the new team leader of Subproject 2, Discovering the Limits of Reason – Europe and the Crisis of Universalism, who helps us unpack the concept of biopolitics. Drawing from the enquiries developed by Michel Foucault in the 1970s, biopolitics refers to perspectives concerned with the entrance of biological life into the sphere of political techniques. We ask questions such as: How has biopolitics emerged in the course of European history? And what is the relationship between biopolitics and the revolutions in scientific thought that occurred during the 16th and 17th centuries? Exploring the meaning of biopolitics in the present day and age, we also discuss its relevance to contemporary debates on the Covid pandemic and climate change.

Contributors

Marco Piasentier

Dr. Marco Piasentier is the team leader of subproject 2, Discovering the Limits of Reason - Europe and the Crisis of Universalism and a University Researcher at the Centre for European Studies (University of Helsinki).

His disciplinary background is philosophy, and his work chiefly focuses on themes in Post-Kantian European philosophy, social & political thought, and the history of 20th Century philosophy, analytic and continental.

Aada Pettersson

Aada Pettersson is the host of the EuroStorie Podcast. She is a doctoral candidate in Subproject 2, Discovering the Limits of Reason – Europe and the Crisis of Universalism. Aada has a background in Classical Greek and European studies. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on the notion of civil strife in European political thought. @aadapettersson

Floris van Doorn

Floris van Doorn is the host of the EuroStorie Podcast. He is a doctoral candidate in sub-project 3, Migration and the Narratives of Europe as an Area of freedom, security, and justice”. He holds an MSc in International Relations Theory from the London School of Economics. His doctoral research seeks to locate the EU’s external migration policies in both place and time, with a particular focus on the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF for Africa). @favd393

Transcription of the episode.

Credits

Episode no: 15 (series 3, episode 3)
Date recorded: 19 October 2022
Release date: 11 November 2022
Episode production, recording, and editing: Viljami Salo, Aada Pettersson, and Floris van Doorn
Music: Antonio Lopez Garcia*
Web Content: Liina Aulanko
Transcription: Sampo Mustonen
Banner: Tuomas Heikkilä
Banner photo: Unsplash/Jakob Braun
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