Biopolitics and development? Foucault and agamben on the state government and violence

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between biopolitics and development from the perspective of the notions of the State, government and violence. The goal consists of examining the analytical elements which gravitate around critical perspectives of development seeking an interpretive axis for the ambivalence of the actions of the State based on two theoretical possibilities which converge in the thought of Giorgio Agamben: the analysis of biopower and government in Foucault and the articulations between violence that allude to Walter Benjamin. The reflection on the theoretical arguments is carried out examining data from the qualitative survey on agro-ecological policies in southern Brazil. The conclusions show that development and its benefits can be problematized from the prism of power and violence, reconfiguring development more as a modernizing impulse that hopes to manage life than the expansion of well-being.