Biopolitical issues and minority groups

This research axis focuses on issues tied to a citizen’s right to dispose of his/her life and body, and to the forms of life and death that trouble existing social, political and economic norms. Our consideration of these biopolitical and necro-political issues aims at better understanding various modalities of interpretation (knowledge, truths) and intervention (policies, laws, technologies) that seek to measure, classify and define the value of life and death. The study of these issues forces us to confront the shift from religious and moral explanations towards secular, often scientific, ways of justifying the power to make live, to let die, or even “make die”.

This research axis is located at the crossroads of various policies, practices and discourses surrounding the rights to life and death. We wish to interrogate the biopolitical and necro-political issues observable in various traces—whether these are found in medical, judicial or police archives, or those collected through interviews and observation. We will pay particular attention to minority groups, for example the francophone minority, and to groups that are minoritized by their histories and living conditions.