| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Building on the work of Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault, this paper explores the critical intersection between biopolitics and geopolitics. More specifically, an analysis is performed on the discourse that has been produced by the US executive with regard to the ongoing Darfur crisis. I interpret this discourse as part of a bio-normative geopolitical calculation aimed at maintaining the US claim on the valuation of global life without, however, committing many resources to actually protecting and securing this life within a meaningful political community. This investigation points particularly to the challenge that foreign humanitarian crises pose to the legitimacy of the United States' global hegemonic ambitions. I argue that the United States has responded to this challenge by presenting itself as a global moral hegemon whose role is primarily to judge rather than act with regard to the protection of foreign human life. As the named "genocide" in Darfur continues, the United States is also forcing a devaluation of the concept of genocide itself, thus initiating a fundamental recalibration of the relation between global ethics and geopolitics.
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