On biodiplomacy: Negotiating life and plural modes of existence

Abstract

This article examines the intersection of biopolitics with diplomacy and engages its dynamic re-envisioning as biodiplomacy. It revisits Michel Foucault’s peripheral attention to diplomacy and his framing of the concept in his writings on raison d’état and the government of the living. The article suggests that biodiplomacy can help us understand better the complexity of global biopolitical projects, moving us beyond governmentality and sensitizing us about the continuous negotiation of the meaning and materiality of particular ways of living vis-à-vis other ways of being. Specifically, the article addresses modes of existence peculiar to the postcolony or encompassing antithetical value systems and argues that biodiplomacy opens up a wider field of ethical and cosmopolitical possibilities by making visible the interconnected plurality of human and non-human forces.