International Biopolitics: Foucault, Globalisation and Imperialism

In this article, I present a new Foucauldian reading of the international, via Foucault?s concept of `biopolitics?. I begin by surveying the existing Foucauldian perspectives on the international, which mostly take as their point of departure Foucault?s concept of `governmentality?, and mostly diagnose a `global governmentality? or `global biopolitics? in the current era of globalisation. Against these majority positions, I argue that analysis of the contemporary international through the lens of Foucauldian biopolitics in fact shows us that our world system is marked by a parasitic imperialism of rich sovereign states over poor ones, carried on at the level of populations.