Sovereign Power and the Biopolitics of Human Security

In: Security dialogue, Volume 39, Issue 5, p. 517-537

Abstract

This article examines the manner in which the human security discourse enables a dual exercise of sovereign power and biopower. Drawing from the work of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, it argues that human security contributes to this dual exercise by conceptualizing a form of life rendered amenable to biopolitical technologies and rationalities while simultaneously defining the conditions of exceptionality that assist in sovereign power's ability to authorize international interventions meant to secure human life. This frame of reference is then mobilized to read the human security discourse within the broader developments of the concept of security from the immediate postwar period to the post-9/11 moment. It is argued that the human security discourse informs the current biopolitical networks of world order and often works in conjunction with — rather than against — the global exercise of sovereign power made evident by the `war on terror'.