Biopolitics of Security

Michael Dillon is Emeritus Professor of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University. He has written extensively on international political theory, continental philosophy, security and war and cultural research.

• Preface 1. A Political Analytic of Finitude: The Infinity of Finite Government and Rule 2. Biopolitics of Security in the 21st Century 3. Biopolitics, Government and Economy 4. Underwriting Security 5. Pious Economies 6. Biopolitics of Security, Race and War 7. Governing Terror: The State of Emergency of Biopolitical Emergence Conclusion: Acceleration: Advent of the Baroque Katechon

‘No one writing about security issues is as philosophically astute, conceptually innovative, politically attuned, and eloquent as Michael Dillon. Everyone in academic, journalism, and policy communities concerned with security thinking should read Biopolitics of Security.’--Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawai’i, Manoa, USA'Biopolitics of Security confirms Michael Dillon's place as both the foremost critic and exponent of political theology writing today. Departing from an analysis of baroque artifice as a response to the death of the Christian God, Dillon shows how the retreat of God as the locus of infinity and source of salvation is succeeded by an infinity of endings that reduce individual lives to insignificance and prompt a desperate self-assertion contained by the security state or katechon. Yet he also shows how this stubborn persistence of infinite life also points beyond the baroque theatrical scenario of martyrs, tyrants and intriguers to other ways of living with power. His analyses of the temporal structures of life and power thus fundamentally question the baroque alignments of sovereignty and government that have until now both secured and ruined our lives.’ – Howard Caygill, Kingston University, UK