The purpose of this article is to examine a form of biopower that operates for geopolitical reasons in the contemporary globalized world. The object of analysis is a camp in which the sovereign power demonstrates its primordial structure. According to Giorgio Agamben, the Italian philosopher, such camps are a part of the paradigm of modern biopolitics, that is to say, a space where the state of exception becomes the norm. People held in the camp are abandoned by the ordinary juridical order and become ‘human beings in excess’ and ‘bare life’.
In this paper, I analyze a mechanism of biopower at a Center for Temporary Stay and Assistance (CPT) for ‘illegal immigrants’ in Italy as a pertinent example of one of these camps. Anti-CPT movements radically confront the camp’s functions of administrative detention and violence. But, even if this perspective grasps undoubtedly some rationales that make the CPT operational, there could also be a risk of being politically near-sighted in reducing biopower to these characteristics. Because we can say that the power in the CPT tries to save, protect, and reproduce lives somehow. Its major functions could be not only the power of detention but also that of ‘hospitality’.
Regina Pacis, a CPT situated near Lecce in the Italian southeast, has welcomed illegal migrants as ‘guests’. It has provided charity to the entrants, even if they may be excluded or expelled from Italy in the near future. Such power can operate, being based on absolute morals such as the dignity of human life. But this sort of charity or humanitarian assistance represents the newcomers as ‘victims’. Finally the power of good will to ‘aid survival’ can gradually reverse into the opposite direction. This process demonstrates that the life over which it is exercised is not outside the sovereign power.
So, it will be necessary to examine ‘critical geopolitics’ from the point of view of various forms of biopolitics.
