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Billionaire populism and the politics of superfluity. A public lecture with Dr Julian Honkasalo
Billionaire populism and the politics of superfluity: Challenges for grassroots democratic organizing in the age of finance capitalism.
Abstract:
In this paper I aim to offer a framework for understanding and theorizing the sophisticated and normalized, yet often hidden, violent forms of biopower that render lives as disposable or superfluous. I also aim to offer angles for theorizing resistance to structural oppression, rather than seeing resistance only as based on individual, liberal claims to rights, equality and visibility (Spade 2009 and 2015). I ask: where is biopolitics headed in the current context of global, neoliberal finance capitalism and the rising far right mobilizing? What kind of political organizing is necessary for non-violent resistance? What is the place of gender studies in such resistance? The first part of the paper examines the rise of billionaire populism through the lens of Hannah Arendts theorization of the politics of superfluity in The Origins of Totalitarianism. I argue that Arendts notion of superfluity, particularly the way in which it operates in her analysis of ideological racism, administrative bureaucracy and finally totalitarianism, is a key for understanding the mechanisms of modern social and political administration of life and death, in other words, what Foucault and Agamben would later theorize as biopolitics and thanatopolitics.
The second part of the paper examines European grassroots democratic organizing and non-violent protests in the first decade of the 21st century. I understand these pre-Occupy era movements such as Reclaim the Streets and Tute Bianche as pioneering resistance movements against neoliberal biopolitics, not globalization as such. In this sense, their alter-globalization rhetoric differs significantly from the current, far-right anti-globalization movement. At the same time, the citywide mass protests and strikes of the decade were also a testing ground for the digitalization of surveillance and the para-militarization of the police force, which reached its culmination in the 9/11 War on Terror legislation.
I conclude by tracing how the global trend of detaining and warehousing refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, poor people and trans people of color, operates through racialized-gendered class separation, surveillance, incarceration as well as a normative framework that renders some lives as redundant, unworthy and supernumerary. This apparatus of power that capitalizes on human suffering, is coupled with the rise of an unregulated and supra-legal network of offshore-finance and tax havens that secure international finance flows into the possession of a small group of multinational corporations and authoritarian leaders (Harvey 2005; Hendrikse & Fernandez 2019; Mazzucato, 2020). I argue that understanding biopolitics in the present-day context is not possible without addressing this crisis of humanity and without critically analyzing and discussing the possibility of an alternative formulation of political freedom based on solidarity, not economic wealth.
BIO:
Julian Honkasalo is an Academy of Finland postdoctoral research scholar in gender studies, University of Helsinki. Honkasalo obtained their PhD in gender studies at the University of Helsinki in 2016, with a dissertation on feminist interpretations of Hannah Arendt. Honkasalo obtained a second PhD in political science at the New School for Social Research in 2018, with a dissertation on Hannah Arendt and biopolitics. The dissertation was awarded with the New School's Hannah Arendt Award in Politics. Honkasalo's current postdoctoral research focuses on contemporary offshoots of twentieth-century race hygiene and eugenic discourse from a Foucaultian perspective as well as resistance to biopolitics.
ABOUT THE EVENT:
This event is organized as part of the third and final workshop in the project Transforming Identities: Exploring changes, tensions and visions in the Nordic region through the prism of identity politics. The lecture will be chaired by Elisabeth Lund ENgebretsen (project leader; University of Stavanger).
The project is generously funded by The Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) and the Nordic Council of Ministers.
All welcome but preregistration is necessary via Zoom
In this paper I aim to offer a framework for understanding and theorizing the sophisticated and normalized, yet often hidden, violent forms of biopower that render lives as disposable or superfluous. I also aim to offer angles for theorizing resistance to structural oppression, rather than seeing resistance only as based on individual, liberal claims to rights, equality and visibility (Spade 2009 and 2015). I ask: where is biopolitics headed in the current context of global, neoliberal finance capitalism and the rising far right mobilizing? What kind of political organizing is necessary for non-violent resistance? What is the place of gender studies in such resistance? The first part of the paper examines the rise of billionaire populism through the lens of Hannah Arendts theorization of the politics of superfluity in The Origins of Totalitarianism. I argue that Arendts notion of superfluity, particularly the way in which it operates in her analysis of ideological racism, administrative bureaucracy and finally totalitarianism, is a key for understanding the mechanisms of modern social and political administration of life and death, in other words, what Foucault and Agamben would later theorize as biopolitics and thanatopolitics.
The second part of the paper examines European grassroots democratic organizing and non-violent protests in the first decade of the 21st century. I understand these pre-Occupy era movements such as Reclaim the Streets and Tute Bianche as pioneering resistance movements against neoliberal biopolitics, not globalization as such. In this sense, their alter-globalization rhetoric differs significantly from the current, far-right anti-globalization movement. At the same time, the citywide mass protests and strikes of the decade were also a testing ground for the digitalization of surveillance and the para-militarization of the police force, which reached its culmination in the 9/11 War on Terror legislation.
I conclude by tracing how the global trend of detaining and warehousing refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, poor people and trans people of color, operates through racialized-gendered class separation, surveillance, incarceration as well as a normative framework that renders some lives as redundant, unworthy and supernumerary. This apparatus of power that capitalizes on human suffering, is coupled with the rise of an unregulated and supra-legal network of offshore-finance and tax havens that secure international finance flows into the possession of a small group of multinational corporations and authoritarian leaders (Harvey 2005; Hendrikse & Fernandez 2019; Mazzucato, 2020). I argue that understanding biopolitics in the present-day context is not possible without addressing this crisis of humanity and without critically analyzing and discussing the possibility of an alternative formulation of political freedom based on solidarity, not economic wealth.
BIO:
Julian Honkasalo is an Academy of Finland postdoctoral research scholar in gender studies, University of Helsinki. Honkasalo obtained their PhD in gender studies at the University of Helsinki in 2016, with a dissertation on feminist interpretations of Hannah Arendt. Honkasalo obtained a second PhD in political science at the New School for Social Research in 2018, with a dissertation on Hannah Arendt and biopolitics. The dissertation was awarded with the New School's Hannah Arendt Award in Politics. Honkasalo's current postdoctoral research focuses on contemporary offshoots of twentieth-century race hygiene and eugenic discourse from a Foucaultian perspective as well as resistance to biopolitics.
ABOUT THE EVENT:
This event is organized as part of the third and final workshop in the project Transforming Identities: Exploring changes, tensions and visions in the Nordic region through the prism of identity politics. The lecture will be chaired by Elisabeth Lund ENgebretsen (project leader; University of Stavanger).
The project is generously funded by The Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) and the Nordic Council of Ministers.
All welcome but preregistration is necessary via Zoom
Organizer: Transforming Identities: Changes, tensions & visions in the Nordic region
Submitted by: NIKK
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