Biopolitics from Below: Crisis, Conjuncture, Rupture (CEU Press Perspectives) - Softcover

Samaddar, Ranabir

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9633868165 ISBN 13: 9789633868164

Publisher: Central European University Press, 2025

Synopsis

The current social turmoil enveloping the world has produced knee jerk reactions and a plethora of policy declarations. At the same time, the scenario is marked with response of those with low socioeconomic status to the worldwide chaos and precarious living conditions. In this context, how do we make sense of what is being described variously as a breakdown of democracy, its exhaustion, and the new challenges in the form of an alternative politics of life or a phenomenon that we may term as “biopolitics from below”?

The theme of the book is crisis, conjuncture, and rupture. It relates to the question of correlation of social and political forces in the emergence of certain events, presents certain events as illustrations, and takes a historiographical-analytical route to argue why certain things happen in the way they happen. Usually, crisis is the explanatory factor. This book seeks to go deeper and find out why some crises and not all produce unexpected outcomes. Or, as this book puts it differently, the essential gradient of a crisis is the correlation of forces at a particular time - and thus the question of conjuncture. The book seeks to open up to new adventures in thought, imagining new openings, and creating exits from the situation we find ourselves in.

About this title

About the Author

Ranabir Samaddar is currently the Distinguished Chair in Migration and Forced Migration Studies, Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, India.

Edition details

• Publisher: Central European University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9633868165
• ISBN 13: 9789633868164
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180