Heterotopic Multitudes in the Face of Global Biocapitalist Management

Abstract

Contemporary capitalism is characterized by the colonization and codification of virtually all aspects of life: work, leisure, friendship, love, community life, education, and affection are captured by the logic of productivity and commodification. However, in the interstices of biocapitalism’s global management, forces of resistance and creative re-existence emerge that challenge life and the creation of other forms of existence irreducible to the precarization of capital and the logic of consumption and commodified life. The multitude—a collective power conceptually developed from Spinoza to Hardt and Negri—as a political-affective force creates what Foucault called heterotopias, understood as physical, symbolic, and relational “counterspaces” capable of creating other forms of life, even when their duration is temporary. Heterotopic multitudes are counterattacks, already existing otherworlds that confront the global management of biocapitalism in the struggle for life.