Sergei Medvedev
Sergei Medvedev is Affiliate Professor at the Institute of East European Studies at Charles University in Prague.
Sergei Medvedev, Andrey Makarychev
Biopower in Putin’s Russia
From Taking Care to Taking Lives
In this book, Makarychev and Medvedev examine the importance of biopolitics in fueling Russia’s confrontation with the West. In their view, the development of Putin’s illiberal authoritarianism was largely triggered by what they call a biopolitical turn. This shift is exemplified by the use of an increasing number of regulatory mechanisms to discipline and constrain the human body. Such political practices concern issues of sexuality, reproductive behavior, adoption, fertility, family planning, public hygiene, and demography. This turn created a new disciplinary framework for the population and the elite. Bans and restrictions of a biopolitical nature, became one of the main tools for articulating the rules of belonging in the political community and drawing its political boundaries. Biopolitical discourses have taken up the core of the Russian identity formation, which contrasts a positive “conservative Russia” with a supposedly vicious “liberal West.”
The presentation of the political genealogy of the body-centric structures of power and hegemony in Russia implies their transformation from bio- to necropolitics. Necropolitical (repressive and life-depriving) components are inscribed in the biopolitical regimes of power: they form the core of Putin’s rule over Russia and are a key factor behind the war against Ukraine.
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Authors
Andrey Makarychev
Andrey Makarychev is Professor of Regional Political Studies at the University of Tartu Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies. He teaches courses on "Globalization", "Political Systems in post-Soviet Space", "Regional Integration in post-Soviet Space", "Visual Politics", and “The Essentials of Biopolitics”. He is the author of Popular Biopolitics and Populism at Europe’s Eastern Margins (Brill, 2022), and co-authored four monographs: Celebrating Borderlands in a Wider Europe: Nations and Identities in Ukraine, Georgia and Estonia (Nomos, 2016), Lotman's Cultural Semiotics and the Political (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), Critical Biopolitics of the Post-Soviet: from Populations to Nations (Lexington Books, 2020) and Practical Biopolitics of COVID-19: Comparing Russian and Indonesian Experiences (Lexington Books, 2023). He co-edited several academic volumes: Mega Events in post-Soviet Eurasia: Shifting Borderlines of Inclusion and Exclusion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Vocabularies of International Relations after the Crisis in Ukraine (Routledge, 2017); Borders in the Baltic Sea Region: Suturing the Ruptures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). His articles have been published in such academic journals as Slavic Review, Journal of International Relations and Development, Political Geography, Slavic Military Review, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Alternatives, Nationalities Papers, Journal of Borderland Studies, among others.
- Title
- Biopower in Putin’s Russia
- Subtitle
- From Taking Care to Taking Lives
- Authors
- Sergei Medvedev
- Andrey Makarychev
- Price
- € 108,00 excl. VAT
- ISBN
- 9789633867495
- Format
- Hardback
- Number of pages
- 196
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 30 - 09 - 2024
- Dimensions
- 15.2 x 22.9 cm
- Category
- Political Science
- Discipline
- Social and Political Sciences
- Imprint
- CEU Press
- Also available as
- eBook PDF (Open Access)
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Biopolitical Genealogy of Putin’s Regime
Introduction
Framing the biopolitical debate
The Russian biopolitical debate: an outline
The “Russian world” and civilizational biopolitics
Putin’s zoepolitics
The necropolitical turn
Is it fascism yet?
Conclusions
Chapter 2. Performative Biopower and Biopolitical Activism
Sovereign biopower and biopolitical dystopia
The biopolitics of performative resistance
Piotr Pavlensky’s biopolitics of protest
Aleksandr Gabyshev, the Shaman
Conclusions
Chapter 3. Biopower and Sovereignty in the Russian Sports Industry
Introduction
The Soviet doping legacy
The Sochi doping scandal
Biopolitical sovereignty
Sovereignty and anatomopolitics
Conclusion
Chapter 4. Biopolitics of the Pandemic
Introduction
Medicalized bio-governmentality
Regionalized governmentality
Futuristic bio-governmentality
The bio-governmentality of resistance
Anatomopolitical governmentality
The absent center of sovereignty?
From the pandemic to war
Conclusion
Chapter 5. War in Ukraine: From Bio- to Necropolitics
Introduction
Anatomopolitics of the “Russian world”: the Bucha massacre
Biopolitics of mobilization: the body as a natural resource
Exposing bare life: “Wagner” PMC
The gendered war: re-defining masculinity, femininity, and the family
Necropolitics of war: the cult of death
Concluding remarks: the dialectics of bio- and necropolitics
Conclusion
Appendix: Academic Glossary
References
Index
