Earth, life, plasticity: Biopolitics, the anthropocene, and the problem of form

This chapter deals with the changing forms of bios through a cogent critique of Catherine Malabou’s theorization of plasticity. Rather than simply saying nature is infinitely malleable, it is deeply interested in the conditions of formal change, the measure of human impress and its whole earth transformations (including the frames of environmental harm). Plasticity for Malabou does not substitute for biopolitics but takes its critical potential onto different ground. This becomes a resonant formal challenge, a key area in which biopolitics has often remained silent. As such, this chapter addresses the limits of biopolitics in Foucault’s work (including around race and sexuality), while learning from the difference this makes in thinking biopower.