Subverting the Biopolitics of Liberal Governance: Complexity,

Circulation and Self-Organisation

Leonie Ansems de Vries, University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus
Jrg Spieker, Birkbeck College, University of London

Abstract
Taking liberal governance as a regime of power whose object, target, and stake is
life itself, this article explores the ways in which the liberal account of life can be
subverted and deployed against the very power relations it now informs. The
article begins with a brief consideration of how a natural-scientific conception of
life in terms of complexity, circulation and self-organisation has come to shape
liberal biopolitics. It then attempts to trace the emergence and development of
this conception of life from its initial articulation in the work of Kant, through its
re-articulation in Hayek, to its more recent appearance in discourses of
governance and complexity. It is argued that this naturalised and depoliticised
conception tends to reduce life to the kind of material deemed conducive to a
liberal social and political order.

The article then engages Darwins notion of

evolution to consider how the liberal reduction of life to its biopolitical form can
be contested. This consideration is guided the following set of questions: Is what
is at stake in modern biopolitics not the politicisation, but the depoliticisation of
life? And if this is the case, then do we need to think of resistance to biopower in
terms of the repoliticisation of life? Formulating an affirmative answer to these
questions, this paper suggests that forms of resistance might be developed on
the basis of the very conception of life in terms of complexity that informs and
sustains contemporary liberal governance. It is, we argue, by embracing rather
than denouncing as dangerous and domesticating the difference that lies at the
basis of their visions biological and political life that conceptualising resistance to
biopower becomes possible.

Introduction
This paper is an exploration of how, and to what effect, liberal political thought
and practice has historically been shaped by certain naturalistic ontological
frameworks. It is mainly concerned with the relationship between liberalism and
a particular conception of life in terms of complexity, circulation and selforganisation.

We attempt to trace the emergence and development of this

conception of life from its initial articulation in the work of Kant, through its rearticulation in Hayek, to its more recent appearance in certain liberal discourses
of

governance

and complexity.

It is argued that, notwithstanding its

emancipatory claims, this naturalised and depoliticised conception tends to

reduce life to the kind of material deemed conducive to a liberal social and
political order. We then move on to discuss how the liberal reduction of life to its
biopolitical form can be contested. The argument put forward here is that forms
of resistance might be developed on the basis of the very conception of life in
terms of complexity, circulation and self-organisation that informs and sustains
contemporary liberal governance. Having outlined an alternative to the liberal
account of what life is and what it may become, the article concludes with some
tentative suggestions as to how this account might shape critical thought and
political agency today.
As will already be apparent, we follow Michel Foucault in taking liberal
governance as a regime of power whose object, target, and stake is life itself.
Our analysis emphasises the close relationship between the truth about life
and practices of power the constitutive interdependence in which biopolitical
forms of knowledge and apparatuses of power are linked.

As is well known,

Foucault first used the concept of bio-power (the power over life) to refer to
two distinct but related mechanisms of power: an anatomo-politics of the human
body and a bio-politics of the population.1

In later writings, he renders this

seemingly straightforward concept considerably more ambiguous by pointing to

a number of possible origins and manifestations of the link between politics and

1 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1. The Will to Knowledge (London: Penguin,
1987), 139.

life.2

While recognising that Foucaults original formulation of the concept is

sufficiently ambiguous to allow for a range of different interpretations, we will

adopt and elaborate on an understanding of the concept that revolves around
biology

and

biological

being.

Once

this

biology-based

definition

of

biopower/biopolitics is accepted, it is important to realise that biological being

has not been the same at all times.
If we accept that the bio in biopolitics is associated with biological being, then
we also need to accept that the genealogy of biopolitics is inseparable from the
changing conceptions of life offered by the life sciences. The life that is at stake
in biopower/biopolitics is inseparable from certain life-scientific truth discourses
about the nature of biological being. Foucault was concerned with a biological
conception of life that emerged in the eighteenth century, a conception of life in
terms of (self-)organisation. It is this understanding of species being that he first
traced archaeologically in The Order of Things, and that he then tenuously linked
to his genealogy of liberal political rationality in Security, Territory, Population
and The Birth of Biopolitics. For Foucault, the appearance of liberalism in the
eighteenth century is inseparable from the the entry of nature into the field of
techniques of power.3

The radical innovation associated with the emergence of

a distinctly liberal political rationality is a conceptualisation of order in terms of

nature and self-organisation.

He speaks of a certain naturalism which is

inscribed within the logic of liberal rule: the domain to be governed by liberalism
is a natural one in the sense that it is thought to possess an intrinsic logic of its
own. Indeed, what appears in the middle of the eighteenth century, Foucault
says, really is a naturalism much more than a liberalism. 4 In this naturalistic grid
of intelligibility, circulation is conceived as self-organising, self-regulating as well
as independent of, and antecedent to, political order and authority.
The article is structured as follows.

First we consider how Foucaults original

account of the nexus between liberalism and a conception of life in terms of

2 There is, for example, the genealogical link between biopower and the Judeo-Christian tradition
of pastoral power. Then there is the idea that biopower/biopolitics is inextricably linked to the rise
of the life sciences. Foucault also indicated that there is a historically significant relationship
between the biopoliticisation of politics and the development of liberal political economy. Other
leads, complementary or alternative, may reasonably be inferred from his comments on the
governance of epidemics or on the discourse of race.

3 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, Note 4, p. 75.

4 Ibid., p. 62.
3

complexity and self-organisation is reflected in the writings of Kant. It is Kant, we

argue, who provides the first more or less coherent liberal conception of politics
and life in terms of (self-)organisation. And it is in Kants writings that we can
also understand the depoliticising effects of this biopolitical conception of liberal
governance.

In Kant, life is reduced to its biopolitical form and circulation is

always already a property of life itself, rather than a product of power. Then we
will focus on the political thought of F.A. Hayek and on role of notions of
complexity, spontaneity and self-organisation therein.

We show that Hayek

deploys several concepts and ideas associated with complexity theory, and that
his

defence

of

liberal-capitalism

largely

emancipatory connotations of these ideas.

relies

on

the

subversive

and

We then argue that Hayeks political

project relies on a pervasive economy of inclusion and exclusion through which

liberal and non-liberal subjects are constructed and positioned. The systematic
violence that takes place beneath the smooth surface of the open society
undermines the emancipatory pretensions of Hayeks political project.
Finally, the paper engages Darwin to develop a politics of complexity that
challenges the bio-political foreclosure of which Hayeks notion of the open
society is ultimately productive. By producing a perspective of evolution that
prioritises difference over reproduction, Darwins account can be invoked to
challenge the depoliticisation inherent in and the war waged at the heart of
Hayek's open society. It is, we argue, by embracing rather than denouncing as
dangerous and domesticating the difference that lies at the basis of biological
and political life that conceptualising resistance to biopower becomes possible.

Kant: politics, life and (self-)organisation

Kant sought to develop a general philosophy of nature based on Newtonian
physics. In Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, he presents a
mechanical explanation of the origin and organisation of the cosmos. Kant sets
out to reconcile his account of Newtonian physics with the existence of an
omnipotent and omniscient god and thereby with a teleological account of a
harmonious nature.5

Natures purposive striving towards order, harmony and

perfection demonstrates, Kant argues, supernatural design.

Matter must

5 Martin Schnfeld, The Philosophy of the Young Kant: The Precritical Project (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000), pp. 98, 105.

necessarily produce beautiful connections for it does not possess the freedom
to stray from the plan of perfection. 6 Due to the animate qualities ascribed to
matter and nature, there is no distinction between the living and the non-living.
In opposition to the inert matter of Newtonian mechanics, for the pre-critical Kant
all matter is active. Kant ascribes to elements, themselves sources of life, vital
forces [wesentliche Krfte] to set one another in motion.

In opposition to

Newton, Kant endows matter itself with force: all matter abides by the same
fundamental and mechanical law of nature, i.e. its self-organisation and selfordering towards perfection.

By the time of writing the Critique of Judgement (1790), Kant has reversed his
view on the activity of matter as well as on the applicability of the mechanical
law of nature to all matter. Indeed, Kant has been credited with playing a key
role in effecting the shift from mechanics to organicism and the rise of biology by
introducing

the

distinction

between

mechanisms

and

organisms. 7

He

distinguishes between the living and the non-living on account of the capacity of
self-organisation, which was to become the defining feature of life from the
nineteenth century onwards. He establishes the distinction between inert matter
and living organisms on the basis of purpose and organisation, which, in his
theory, are intrinsically and self-evidently linked. A thing constitutes a physical
end only if it is both cause and effect of itself, which is to say if the parts (organ)
and the whole (organism) reciprocally produce one another only under these
conditions and upon these terms can such a product be an organized and a selforganized being, and, as such, be called a physical end. 8 Only organisms abide
by these conditions: an organized natural product is one in which every part is
reciprocally both end and means. In such a product nothing is in vain, without an
end, or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature. 9 In a significant reversal
of his pre-Critical thought, the living, as opposed to the non-living, is
characterised by Kant in terms of an interactive and mutually constitutive
6 Immanuel Kant, Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, transl. Stanley L. Jaki
(Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1981), p. 86.

7 Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 84-5.

8 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, transl. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986), p. 22.

9 Ibid., pp. 24-25.

5

movement of (self-) organisation between organ and organism.

In addition to

self-organisation and in close relation to it what sets the organism apart from
the non-living is its capacity of reproduction.

For Kant, an organized being

possesses inherent formative power [] a self-propagating formative power,

which cannot be explained by the capacity of movement alone, that is to say, by
mechanism.10

These characteristics of self-organisation and self-generation

imply, furthermore, a capacity for and tendency of self-preservation. As will be

elaborated upon below, in Kants philosophy of nature pre-Critical as well as
Critical perturbation and movements of disorder(ing) are intrinsic to the
processes of (self-)organisation and self-preservation.

Whilst the explanation of organic form and organisation would become the chief
occupation of the emerging discipline of biology in the nineteenth century, Kant
is an eighteenth-century thinker to the extent that he believes that life cannot be
explained. He stresses that the organization of nature has nothing analogous to
any causality known to us.11 Remarkably, despite reiterating that any analogy
falters in the effort to conceptualise life, Kant suggests that one such analogy
can nevertheless be drawn:

We may, on the other hand, make use of an analogy to the above

mentioned immediate physical ends to throw light on a certain union,
which, however, is to be found more often in idea than in fact. Thus in
the case of a complete transformation, recently undertaken, of a great
people into a state, the word organization has frequently, and with
much propriety, been used for the constitution of the legal authorities
and even of the entire body politic. For in a whole of this kind certainly
no member should be a mere means, but should also be an end, and,
seeing that he contributes to the possibility of the entire body, should
have his position and function in turn defined by the idea of the
whole.12

10 Ibid., pp. 22.

11 Ibid., pp. 23.
12 Ibid.
6

Kant establishes the identity between the individual body and the body politic on
the basis of organisation. Given Kants definitions of life and organisation, and
the intimate connection between the two, this analogy suggests that not only the
individual organism, but also the body politic is an end in itself and its purpose
self-preservation. This would evidently be a peculiar conclusion, reminiscent of a
logic commonly attributed to Hobbes, and not to the liberal Kant of Perpetual
Peace. The difference, as will become apparent later, lies in this: the Hobbesian
body politic is an end in itself because it is artificial (albeit not without natural
elements), whilst Kantian political organisation constitutes its own end because it
is not artificial i.e. an organism. It is on this basis that political order(ing) is
naturalised and universalised in the modern liberal image.

The notion of self-organisation is common to the Allgemeine Naturgeschichte and

the Kritik der Urteilskraft.

In both works Kant not only argues that nature

organises itself whether via the animated force of matter according to

mechanical laws, or through an organic force that is beyond (mechanical)
explanation but also elaborates how this process operates.

As discussed

above, in Allgemeine Naturgeschichte Kant rebuts Newtons account of natures

entropic propensity if left to its own devices.
strives towards harmony and perfection.

Rather, Kant contends, nature

Despite this teleological vision of

harmony and order, the process itself is one of disorder(ing).

At a certain stage

in her movement towards perfection, entropic tendencies emerge which bring

about the disintegration of organised structures. 13 Yet, if nature possesses the
capacity to move from chaos to regular order, Kant asks, would she not be
capable of restoring herself from the new chaos consequent upon the slowing
down and eventual standstill of her motions, spurring a new development from
chaos towards order? Indeed, he affirms, planetary systems can fall into decay
and re-develop into an orderly system, in a play [that] has more than once
repeated itself.14

Kants conception of nature according to the laws of

mechanics produces a phoenix of nature, which burns itself out only to revive
from its ashes rejuvenated, across all infinity of times and spaces. 15 He argues
that, despite the conflict and collision of elements in natures process towards
13 Schnfeld, The Philosophy of the Young Kant, Note 24, p. 124.
14 Kant, Universal Natural History, Note 25, p. 160.
15 Ibid.
7

order, eventually all particles with settle in a state of the smallest reciprocal
action, whereby all resistance disappears and elements continue in free circular
motion.16 Not only does Kant here articulate a conviction in the final defeat of
(forces of) disorder(ing), he furthermore appears oblivious to the existence or
implications of resistance. This is precisely one of the ways in which the political
is foreclosed in the modern liberal image.
In Kants vision, order must eventually prevail, whilst forces of resistance
inherent in the process are to be disguised through their recycling into
movements that sustain rather than undermine order. Kant seeks to disguise the
existence of perturbing forces as soon as political order has been instituted in
order to account for the prohibition of resistance. He accordingly endeavours to
sustain his portrayal of peaceful order by warning against questioning the origins
of order: the subject ought not to indulge in speculations about its [political
orders] origins with a view to acting upon them, as if its right to be obeyed were
open to doubt.17 Investigations into the actual historical origins of the state are
both futile and objectionable. Anyone who, having unearthed its ultimate origin,
offers resistance to the state may with complete justice be punished, eliminated,
or banished as an outlaw. 18 By demarcating the political domain of justice, order,
morality and rationality thus, Kant restricts the potentialities of politics and life to
certain modes of (inter)action. In Kant, the universality and naturalness of the
liberal image are founded on a particular production of nature, order and life; an
understanding premised upon lifes requirement and capacity for securitisation
within a particular domain of governance and order. Kants conceptualisation of
nature entails the demarcation of what life may be and become politically, which
is captured in organisational terms. Those forces moving outside the circulation
of self-organising reproduction must be eradicated: life may be and become
merely within the bounds of a particular (re)production of circulation. Forces that
cannot be made to work productively for the production and sustenance of this
domain of security and freedom, e.g. resistance, rebellion and other rogue
forces, must be destroyed.

16 Kant, The Critique of Judgement, Note 27, p. 116.

17 Kant, The Critique of Judgement, Note 27, p. 143.
18 Ibid.
8

For Kant, life itself is inherently amenable to liberal governance he reduces life
to the kind of material deemed conducive to a liberal social and political order.
What follows from this is that the only politics possible is the one that is already
inherent in life. Although his vision of political order is founded on antagonism
and war, this force is swiftly delegitimized through the construction of a natural
surface of order, harmony and peace. Social order thus becomes spontaneous,
self-organising, self-regulating as well as independent of, and antecedent to,
political authority. What we can find in Kant is the idea that liberal social and
political organisation is inherent in, and in a sense dictated by, life and nature.
In portraying the development of political order and political relations in terms of
natural development, or as a tendency towards order inherent in life, Kant
naturalises and depoliticises political order and power relations.

Thus, a

particular order is separated from the power relations on which it depends, and
made to appear as if it corresponds to an intrinsic design of nature itself.

Hayek and the order of the open society

In this section, we consider the role of notions of complexity, spontaneity and
self-organisation in Hayeks liberal political philosophy.

How does Hayek use

these notions in developing his conceptions of life and political order? First, we
show that Hayek deploys several concepts and ideas associated with complexity
theory, and that his defence of liberal-capitalism largely relies on the subversive
and emancipatory connotations of these ideas. Then, we examine this ostensibly
emancipatory political project for the ways it mirrors the structures and
configurations of power which it claims to oppose.

We argue that Hayeks

project of the open society relies on a pervasive economy of inclusion and

exclusion through which liberal and non-liberal subjects are constructed and
positioned.

The systematic violence that takes place beneath the smooth

surface of Hayeks open society undermines the emancipatory pretensions of his

political project.

In Hayek, the notions of complexity, spontaneity and self-

organisation remain tied to a rather narrow conception of what life and politics
are and what they may become.

Rather than drawing on insights from

complexity theory to embrace the political potentials of the becoming of life qua
movements and relations, Hayek merely uses certain concepts to naturalise and
universalise liberal order.

Some believe that the emergence of the complexity sciences in the latter half of
the

twentieth

century

amounts

to

period

of

general

scientific

re-

conceptualisation, or indeed to a new dialogue of man with nature. 19 One of its

most influential exponents has described the emergence of complexity science in
terms of a shift of metaphors: rather than relying on the Newtonian metaphor of
clockwork predictability and linearity, which has governed scientific endeavour
for more than three centuries, complexity is associated with metaphors more
closely akin to the growth of a plant. 20

Political philosophy, too, relies on

metaphors and the affinity between Hayeks political thought and the discourse
of complexity is given preliminary expression by the following statement: The
attitude of the liberal towards society is like that of the gardener who tends a
plant and in order to create the conditions most favourable to its growth must
know as much as possible about its structure and the way it functions. 21 The
shared metaphor is indicative of what is otherwise well documented by Hayeks
references to the work of scientists such as Ilya Prigogine or Donald Campbell
whose contributions to complexity theory he draws on for the formulation of his
understanding of spontaneous order.22
The relationship between Hayeks thought and complexity theory remains
subject to debate, and one of the questions that have been raised is whether, or
to what extent, Hayeks work can be seen as a precursor to complexity theory. 23
This has also raised wider questions about the relations between what we now
know as complexity theory and the field of economics, and the subfield of
Austrian economics in particular.

There can be little doubt that the ideas of

complexity theorists and Austrian economists seem to have much in common,

not least their rejection of the presuppositions of neoclassical mainstream
economic theory.

Hayek wrote several essays on complex phenomena in the

19 Nicolis & Prigogine, Exploring Complexity, 1989, p. 3.

20 Brian Arthur cited in Waldorp, M., Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and
Chaos, p. 329.

21 Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London and New York: Routledge, 1944), p. 18.
22 See: Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty (London and New York: Routledge, 1982), Vol. 3, p.
158.

23 Kilpatrick Jr., Henry E. (2001) Complexity, Spontaneous Order and Friedrich Hayek: Are
spontaneous order and complexity essentially the same thing?, Complexity, Vol. 6, No. 3; Wible,
James (2000) What is Complexity?, in D. Colander (ed.) Complexity and the History of Economic
Thought (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 15-31.

10

later 1960s, emphasising their spontaneous or self-organising character. In the

context of complex phenomena, such as life, mind and society, order is the result
of regularities of the behaviour of its constitutive elements in this sense, these
phenomena are to be understood as self-regulating or self-organising systems.
The notion of spontaneous, or self-organising, order can be traced back to the
founder of the Austrian School, Carl Menger, who developed a theory of the
spontaneous emergence of money for transaction purposes in primitive
economies.24
Complexity theory gains its subversive connotation from its opposition to
classical or Newtonian science and the mechanistic world view that is said to
have dominated Western science for too long. Classical science tended to rely
on the machine model of reality and a mechanistic image of the universe. The
scientific enterprise, in its classical form, was concerned with closed systems and
linear relationships; its focus was on order, stability, equilibrium and uniformity.
Complexity theory challenges and undermines many of the basic assumptions on
which this Newtonian model of science rests.

One of the definitive claims

associated with complexity theory is that our world is fundamentally non-linear

linearity is the exception, not the rule.

Rather than focusing on the order,

stability, and uniformity of closed systems, complexity science focuses on the

disorder, instability, and diversity of open systems. Crucially, this shift of focus
also implies that the classical assumptions of omniscience, predictability and full
control have to be abandoned or at least severely qualified. The idea that the
world is complex often goes hand in hand with the insistence on the imperfection
of knowledge and the unpredictability of things.

Complexity theory is often

defined in terms of a series of oppositions: control versus flexibility, hierarchy

versus

autonomy,

decentralisation, etc.

reductionism

versus

pluralism,

centralisation

versus

Complexity replaces stable taxonomy and mechanical

predictability with the rationalities and problematic of the composite sciences of

contingent and emergent being-in-formation. 25

24 Apparently, the theme of spontaneous order and self-organisation had played an important role
in the Austrian school of economics ever since it was first developed by Carl Menger.

25 Dillon, M. and Reid, J., The Liberal Way of War (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 73.
11

Central to Hayeks liberalism is his conception of society in terms of

spontaneous order.

He makes a general distinction between orders that are

made (taxis in Greek) and orders that grow (kosmos in Greek). In the realm of
social life, made orders would include families, plants, corporations as well as the
institutions of government. What these orders have in common is that they rely
for their formation on prior collective agreement, and that they tend to require
centralised direction for their maintenance.

Made orders are the artificial

product of concerted action and they tend to be created with a specific purpose
in mind. Grown or spontaneous orders, by contrast, emerge endogenously they
are self-generating or self-organising. 26

Spontaneous orders tend to be

complex in the sense that they involve a large number of elements and the
interaction between them; they comprise more particular facts than any brain
could ascertain or manipulate.27 Hayek insists that the concept of spontaneous
order is particularly important for understanding the complex phenomena we
encounter in the realms of life, mind and society: Here we have to deal with
grown structures with a degree of complexity which they have assumed and
could assume only because they were produced by spontaneous ordering
forces.28
Complex spontaneous orders can also be distinguished from made orders on the
basis of their abstract character: they consist of a system of abstract relations
between elements which are also defined only by abstract properties. 29

The

abstract character of spontaneous orders is determined by the abstract nature of

the rules which govern the action of its constitutive elements. The formation of a
complex spontaneous order, such as society, depends on individual elements
acting in accordance with a set of abstract rules of conduct. For Hayek, society
is the order that forms when individuals follow such rules of conduct in
responding to their immediate circumstances.

It is Hayeks contention that

society is an order which is not the product of conscious control or rational

design, but the

result of

the

unintended

and

unforeseen

spontaneous

coordination of a multiplicity of actions by self-interested individuals. In social

26 Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 1, p. 37.
27 Ibid., p. 38.
28 Ibid., p. 41.
29 Ibid., p. 39.
12

life order emerges of itself as the unintended consequence of independent

individual actions. While each individual pursues his own ends on the basis of his
own knowledge of his circumstances, their actions are guided by certain rules.
The spontaneous order we find in certain fields of human activity, such as
religion, morals, language and the market, is in principle no different from that
we can observe in biological organisms, crystals or galaxies. All of the above are
complex phenomena which form spontaneously on the basis of certain abstract
rules or regularities of behaviour.
Hayeks theory of spontaneous order is must be seen in relation to his theory of
mind and knowledge. For Hayek, not only human social life but the life of the
mind itself is governed by unspecifiable tacit rules. At least some of the rules
that govern human action and perception are meta-conscious, that is, beyond
our capacities of identification and articulation. 30 The knowledge upon which
social life depends cannot be concentrated in a single brain because it is
embodied in habits and dispositions and governs our conduct via inarticulate
rules.31

The complexity of modern society extends well beyond our mental

capacities. Knowledge is dispersed, temporary and tacit in nature, and only in a

spontaneous social order can this knowledge be utilised efficiently.

Hayeks

theory of knowledge emphasises the cognitive limits of human reason. And it is

on the basis of this conception of knowledge that Hayek develops his critique of
the hubris inherent in socialist and collectivist thought. It has been suggested
that Hayeks scepticism vis--vis both individual knowledge and centralised
authority or decision-making embodies a certain epistemological modesty. 32
Hayek repeatedly warns that we should always bear in mind the necessary and
irremediable ignorance on everyones part of most of the particular facts which
determine the actions of all the several members of human society. In Hayek,
spontaneous order is a solution to the epistemic problem of the fragmented,
temporary and tacit nature of human knowledge. 33

His whole defence of

30 Gray, J., Hayek on Liberty (London and New York: Routledge, 1984), p. 23.
31 Ibid., p. 25.
32 Kacenelenborgen, E., Epistemological Modesty Within Contemporary Political Thought: A Link
between Hayeks Neoliberalism and Pettits Republicanism, European Journal of Political Theory,
Vol. 8, No. 4, 2009.

33 Petsoulas, C., Hayeks Liberalism and its Origins (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 2.
13

markets and private property rests on his epistemological scepticism and his
conception of order in terms of complexity, spontaneity and self-organisation.
It is Hayeks contention that the rules of human conduct that make the
spontaneous order of society possible are themselves spontaneous formations
inasmuch as they have emerged in a process of cultural evolution. By cultural
evolution, Hayek means the evolution of sets of rules, norms and practices,
especially those dealing with several property, honesty, contract, exchange,
trade, competition, gain, and privacy. 34 The theory of cultural evolution is the
conceptual framework through which Hayek attempts to explain the origins of
the liberal-capitalist order it explains how the open society has emerged and
why it must prevail. In order to grasp Hayeks account of cultural evolution it is
useful to begin with his understanding of the relationship between cultural and
biological evolution. First of all, biological and cultural evolution are analogous in
the sense that both rely on the same principle of selection: survival or
reproductive advantage.35

Hayek emphasises that cultural evolution works

through the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection.

Reproduction and

survival are mediated by economic productivity, and natural selection will favour
those forms of life whose cultural formations create the condition for high
productivity. It is Hayeks contention, then, that the open society has prevailed
because of its superior capacity to ensure survival and increase of population.
There are important differences between the way in which selection operates in
the transmission of acquired cultural properties, and the way in which it works on
biological properties and their transmission. 36

Inasmuch as cultural evolution

works through the transmission of acquired rather than genetic properties, it is

more in line with a Lamarckian than a Darwinian explanation. Moreover, cultural
evolution operates mainly through group selection and not through the selection
of individuals: selection will operate as between societies of different types, that
is, be guided by the properties of their respective orders. 37

34 Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, p. 12.

35 Ibid., p. 25.
36 Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 1, p. 23.
37 Ibid., p. 44.
14

It is important to recognise that, for Hayek, culture is ultimately grounded in our

biological endowments it is thus not, strictly speaking, cultural but bio-cultural
evolution that he has in mind. Hayek contends that mans instincts were initially
made not for the open society but for closed societies, or, for a life in small
roving bands or troops. 38

Genetically inherited instincts, such as solidarity,

altruism as well as an instinctual aggressiveness towards outsiders, served

cooperation within a type of order in which human activity was guided by
concrete and commonly perceived aims, dangers and opportunities. 39 These
innate natural longings for common ends and purposes enabled the tribal way
of life in which the human race and its immediate ancestors evolved during the
few million years while the biological constitution of homo sapiens was being
formed.40 Our instincts are largely collectivist and enabled human coexistence
in the small and closed societies that man relied upon before he came to develop
those rules of conduct that made possible the emergence of the open society.
According to Hayek, the process through which present civilization has emerged
is that of a gradual replacement of innate responses by learnt rules. 41 But how
were men able to learn in the first place? Hayek answers this question by
pointing to what he regards as the single most important biological endowment
of man _ the capacity to learn. For Hayek, this particular genetic endowment was
the last decisive step determined by biological evolution which has enabled
other instinctual modes to be partly displaced. 42

In other words, the growing

capacity for learning is an innate characteristic which helped to displace other,

tribal instincts, such as those of solidarity and altruism. The capacity to learn,
Hayek asserts, is one of the prime benefits conferred during our long instinctual
development; it is perhaps the most important capacity with which the human
individual is genetically endowed. 43

Through this capacity, the process of

cultural or social evolution was set in motion and the move from the near animal
state to civilization became possible.

38 Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, p. 11.

39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, p. 16.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., p. 26.
15

In Hayeks view, civilization, as it has developed during the last ten or twenty
thousand years, is a product of our capacity to learn. This aspect of Hayeks
evolutionary framework is of crucial importance in the present context, for what
it shows is that his defence of liberalism is ultimately grounded in a biological
distinction between two forms of life. What we find in Hayek, then, is a bioontological account of the human condition which features a fundamental
conflict

between

two

biological

properties

and

their

respective

cultural

expressions. For Hayek, human evolution is explicable on the basis of this

distinction or conflict between our collectivist instincts and the tribal way of life,
on the one hand, and our capacity to learn and the liberal way of life, on the
other hand. What is at stake in this conflict, as we shall see below, is nothing less
than life itself.

It is Hayeks contention that the open society has prevailed

because of its superior capacity to ensure survival and increase of population.

What Hayek argues, then, is that the whole framework of legal, moral and
economic rules of conduct, including, above all, the institution of private
property, has been conferred upon man by cultural evolution through natural
selection. According to Hayek, the open society is the condition of possibility of
the life and wealth of the vast majority of the human population. There is but one
way of life or one culture the culture of capitalism that provides the
institutional properties necessary for the biological and economic sustainability
of the global population. This also implies that any departure from the economic,
legal and moral rules and institutions associated with this culture must represent
a biopolitical threat that is, a threat to the life of the global population. What
we find beneath the deceptively smooth surface of order that Hayek calls the
open society is a fundamental struggle between two biocultural forms of life.
The relationship of struggle/war between adaptive life and tribal life that
emerges from Hayeks evolutionary ontology is inscribed into the order of the
open society. It is our contention that this aspect of Hayeks theory is important
insofar as it undermines, or at least strongly qualifies, the emancipatory
pretensions of his liberalism. We can only grasp the systematic violence that
Hayeks political project entails if we focus on his (bio-)political ontology, for it is
here that liberal self and other are defined and positioned. In Hayek, tribalism
haunts the interior life of every individual: there is a constant conflict between
our tribal instincts and emotions, on the one hand, and the norms and
16

conventions of the open society, on the other hand. Hayek stresses the necessity
of restraining those natural instincts that do not fit into the order of the open
society.44 And it is through discipline that these tribal instincts, which are to be
understood as animal rather than as characteristically human or good
instincts, are to be restrained. 45 When Hayek speaks of discipline, he refers to
a set of constraints through which we suppress our dangerous tribal instincts and
emotions, such as the demand for social justice or any other collectivist proposal
for social and political change.

Hayekian discipline is a silent war against

tribalism which is waged on the terrain of the individual body and against certain
human instincts, desires and emotions, such as solidarity and altruism. In Hayek,
the liberal subject is the product of a successful struggle against its tribal self.
Fitness for the open society depends on the prior domestication of ones animal
instincts through obligations of self-restraint. The form of subjectivity suitable to
liberal society the self-interested, rational and entrepreneurial individual is a
product of(self-)discipline.
Hayeks conception of the internal other who undermines the open society from
within by allowing her tribal instincts to find political expression in thought and
action. According to Hayek, the greatest threat to society comes from those who,
driven by their savage desires, seek political change in the form either of a
return to older forms of social and political order or the construction of new ones.
Hayek sees great danger in the dissemination and circulation of certain ideas
which appeal to our tribal instincts and generate demand for political change. As
part of the internal struggle against tribalism, the open society must be purged
of the ideas which potentially undermine it, especially theories of repression,
alienation and domination. While Hayek does not explicitly advocate censorship
he clearly states that education poses a threat to society if it disseminates false
political knowledge. Liberal principles, Hayek explains, can be consistently
applied only to those who obey liberal principles. 46 He fails to discuss in detail the
methods and practices through which the liberty of disobedient subjects might
be restricted. Our interpretation of Hayek emphasizes the structural and

44 Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 3, p. 160.

45 Ibid.
46 Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 3, p. 56.
17

systematic violence engendered by the order he envisioned. By focusing on this

aspect of Hayek, this paper puts into question Hayeks emancipatory claims.

Darwin and the difference of life

Hayek thus undermines the emancipatory potential of his vision of the open
society by drawing a clear line between forms of life to be fostered and forms of
life considered a threat to the open society. The similarities between Hayek and
Kants bio-politics are striking in this context. Hayek, like Kant before him,
produces an onto-politics of freedom based on security freedom is produced
through and operates on the basis of an economy of inclusion and exclusion,
which naturalises and universalises liberal order. Both Hayek and Kant develop a
bio-politics, which captures both politics and life in terms of self-organisation.
Despite Hayeks adoption of complexity the open society assumes the same
operative principle as Kants vision of political life: the capacity to adapt to liberal
society constitutes the basis of an economy of inclusion and exclusion.
This section enages Darwin to develop a politics of complexity that challenges
the bio-political foreclosure of which Hayeks notion of the open society is
ultimately productive. It thereby draws upon and produces a different
perspective of evolutionary thought. By prioritising difference rather than
reproduction, this section seeks to develop a perspective that challenges the
depoliticisation inherent in and the war waged at the heart of Hayek's open
society.
It is interesting to note that Darwin himself acknowledges a form of complexity in
the natural world:
in several parts of the world, insects determine the existence of cattle.
Perhaps Paraguay offers the most curious instance for this; for here
neither cattle nor horses nor dogs have ever run wild, though they swarm
southward and northward in a feral state;this is caused by the greater
number in Paraguay of a certain fly, which lays its eggs in the navels of
these animals when first born. The increase of these fliesmust be
habitually checked by some means, probably birds. Hence, if certain
insectivorous birds (whose numbers are probably regulated by hawks or
18

beasts of prey) were to increase in Paraguay, the flies would decrease

then cattle and horses would become feral, and this would certainly
greatly alterthe vegetation: this again would largely affect the insects;
and thisthe insectivorous birds, and so onwards in ever-increasing
circles of complexity.47
Moreover, Darwins theory of evolution of species via natural selection introduces
into the analysis of the development of life over time the aspects of struggle,
excess and contingency, in distinction to Kant and Lamarcks accounts of nature,
in which harmony and teleology are firmly linked. The difference between the
latter two lies in the complete exclusion of crisis and struggle in the relation
between organism and environment by Lamarck, whereas Kant accords
antagonism and war a productive capacity in natures progression towards
fulfilment, that is to say harmony.
Thus, whereas Lamarck and Kant conceive of the order and development of
nature teleologically according to the principle of harmony, Darwin, after lenghty
and thorough study and observation of plants and animals, discovers that
species evolve gradually over time in a struggle for survival. Rejecting both
harmony and teleology, Darwin instead posits the contingency of nature and the
primacy of struggle. No preconceived plan, purpose or inevitability can be drawn
upon to explain variation. Darwin does believe in the overall harmony of the
system, nevertheless, natural selection its regulatory element operates
through contingency and struggle as well as excess and destruction. Hence
contingency is furthermore opposes to Lamarcks belief in the usefulness of
variations, which appears to have been adopted by Hayek.
Darwin stresses the ineffectiveness and wastefulness of nature, e.g. although
millions of germ cells are produced only the exceptional one can play its role. 48
Or in the case of bees:
[w]e need not marvel at the sting of the bee causing the bees
own death; at drones being produced in such vast numbers for one
single act, with the great majority slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at
47 Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 58.
48 Jacob, The Logic of Life, pp. 167 &175; Grosz, Nick of Time, pp. 49 & 90.
19

the astonishing waste of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred

of the queen bee for her own fertile daughters; at ichneumonidae
feeding with live bodies of caterpillars; and at other such cases. 49
Individual cases of destruction and/or excess are of little concern for Darwin who,
in a fundamental shift in biological thinking, focuses attention on populations
rather than individual organisms. The population becomes in fact the mediating
element through which the milieu acts on the organism. As Foucault puts it: the
medium between the milieu and the organism, with all the specific effects of
population: mutations, eliminations, and so forth. 50 Contra Lamarck, for whom
the environment acts directly on the organism, Darwin argues that only on
occasion does the milieu cause variations in species; in general its effects are
limited to favouring the reproduction of some species at the expense of others. 51
In Darwins theory of evolution the milieu influences the organism only via the
mediating elements of the population and reproduction.
Key to standard readings of Darwins thought is the notion of natural selection as
a process of filiative reproduction, productive of change qua evolution. Whereas
these accounts focus on filiation and struggle the survival of the fittest , this
article follows Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari by prioritising the element of
evolution in terms of becoming. Deleuze and Guattaris encounter with Darwin in
A Thousand Plateaus centres on the significance of the role accorded to
contingency and the population without discussing natural selection as such. In
fact, Deleuze and Guattari credit Darwin with effecting two key changes which
imply a movement in the direction of a science of multiplicities and away from
filiative models: first, the substitution of populations for types and, secondly, the
substitution of rates of differential relations for degrees. Whereas in the natural
history tradition types of forms function as the ordering element in the study of
nature, with Darwin these come to be conceptualised increasingly in terms of
populations, packs, colonies, collectivities or multiplicities. In short, the
population will be understood as a multiplicity. The second change for which
Deleuze and Guattari credit Darwin is the understanding of degrees of
49 Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 347.
50 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, p. 78.
51 Canguilhem, Knowledge of Life, p. 105; Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 102; Jacob, Logic of Life, p.
158.

20

development in terms of speeds, rates, coefficients and differential relations. 52

According to Deleuze and Guattari, Darwins double move implies that forms do
not pre-exist the population but are its statistical result:
The more a population assumes divergent forms, the more its multiplicity
divides into multiplicities of different nature, the more its elements form
distinct compounds or matters the more efficiently it distributes itself in
the milieu, or divides up the milieu.53
Species are the result of geographic and ecological processes and not the
stages of them.54 The second implication is that
the degrees are not degrees of pre-existent development or perfection
but are instead global and relative equilibriums: they enter into play as a
function of the advantage they give particular elements, then a particular
multiplicity in the milieu, and as a function of a particular variation in the
milieu.55
Hence Deleuze and Guattari credit Darwin with a reversal that is key to their
philosophical thought: movements and relations precede and are productive of
forms and degrees as well as of populations and not the other way around. This
reversal functions to set up an opposition between natural philosophy and
Darwinian biology; and a reversal characteristic also of the movement from
Newtonian science to complexity theory.56
Deleuze and Guattaris ascription of a theory of multiplicities to Darwin starkly
diverges from the prevailing teleological reading of Darwinian evolution.
Standard, neo-Darwinian interpretations explain evolution in terms of a means52 Ibid., pp. 53-54. See also Darwin, Origin of Species, pp. 43ff. For another conceptualisation of
Darwin as thinker of difference, inspired by Deleuze and Guattaris reading, see: Grosz, The Nick of
Time, especially chapters I-III.

53 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 53-54

54 Ansell Pearson, Germinal Life, p. 165.
55 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 54.
56 Dillon and Reid, Liberal Way of War, p. 74.
21

end progression towards perfection for in the struggle for survival only those
fittest or best adapted will survive. The idea that life develops instrumentally
towards a certain end implies a future projection. As Grosz explains, however,
Darwins endeavour is to record how life may have evolved historically. His
theory is retrospective and does not make future predictions because life cannot
be predicted.57 The Origin of Species develops an idea of natural selection that is
non-teleological; life is contingent and evolves through difference. Albeit on the
basis of reproduction, the idea of evolution as the production of difference is
asserted by Darwin himself. The reproduction of organisms, he explains, ensures
the stability of the species and the individual organism in future generations.
Reproduction constitutes the link between individual and species life as well as
between its preservation and adaptation. This is because transformation and
error are intrinsic to the process of reproduction and hence to the preservation of
the species. Darwin demonstrates that evolution does not and cannot occur
without producing difference. Although emphasising the slowness of the process
of selection, there is, according to Darwin, no limit to the change it may produce:
I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite
complexity of the co-adaptations between all organic beings, one with
another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected
in the long course of time by natures power of selection. 58
Deleuze and Guattaris intervention bends the notion of reproduction by
centralising the idea that deterritorialisation precedes territory e.g. the species
is a result, an outcome rather than a starting point. 59 Secondly, they introduce a
theory of becoming, a rhizomatics which moves beyond filiative reproduction
altogether. The Universe does not function by filiation, they write. 60 Rather than
dependent on lines of filiative descent, life is transformed and (dis)ordered more
productively and creatively through different processes of relationality that
involve heterogeneous elements, i.e. unnatural participations and side57 Grosz, Nick of Time, pp. 8-9.
58 Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 84.
59 In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze credits Darwin with inaugurating the thought of
individual difference. According to Deleuze, the leitmotiv of The Origin of Species is that we do
not know what individual difference is capable of! See: Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 310.

60 Deleuze and Guattari, ATP, p. 267.

22

communications. Lifes evolution or involution is complex, non-linear and

unpredictable.

Deleuze and Guattari thus highlight the monstrous nature of lifes becoming.
Darwin himself suggests that monstrosity is inherent to the process of evolution
when he remarks that it is an almost universal law of nature that the higher
organic beings require an occasional cross with another individual. 61 Life
mutates and transforms, is in continuous movement and produces difference.
Whereas, for Darwin, this process remains subject to the pressures of selection,
Deleuze and Guattaris radical creativity consists in its release from notions of
selection, heredity and filiation. Where standard Darwinian interpretations focus
on the replication of the species on account of the invariant structure of DNA,
Deleuze and Guattari point out that reproduction is dependent on primary
processes of deterritorialisation and decoding. 62 Indissolubly entangled with
movements of productive disordering, evolution is not the straightforward or
linear reproduction of the species as such. Rather than the translation of code,
that is the passage of one pre-established form into another, code is inseparable
from intrinsic movements of decoding. There is no genetics without genetic
drift.63 Every code, they write, has a margin of decoding due to supplements
and surplus values, which enable side-communication. Through viruses
fragments of code may, for instance, be transmitted from the cells of one species
to another.64 Rather than simply being transmitted genetically, from generation
to generation, code is subject to primary processes of de- and trans-coding, that
is to say side-communications and monstrous couplings as movements of
transformation beyond filiative reproduction.

61 Darwin, Charles, The Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilized by Insects. Elibron
Classics, 2005, p. 1.

62 It is to be noted that Deleuze and Guattaris thought is also influenced by Weismannian neoDarwinism, e.g. with respect to population thinking and the focus on the vitality of non-organic life
i.e. the demoting of the organism , however, they refute the idea of evolution as the simple
reproduction of DNA, focusing instead on the primacy of decoding and non-filiative becoming. See:
Ansell Pearson, Germinal Life, pp. 4-6, 8 & 145.

63 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 59. See also: Ansell Pearson, Viroid Life, p. 189.
64 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 59.
23

The rhizomatics into which Deleuze and Guattari transform Darwins theory of
evolution is a far cry from standard Darwinian theory with its perfectionist and
progressive values65. Understood as becoming involution is not the reproduction
of pre-established forms of life; it is characterised by processes of decoding,
genetic drift, monstrous couplings, etc. Life is characterised by its perturbation
more than by its preservation; and by becoming more than by reproduction. One
of the implications of the way in which Deleuze and Guattari make this move is
that chance, error and resistance become not merely immanent to life processes;
their force is anterior. Only via perturbations such as genetic drift and transversal
modes of communication does life become and do forms of life emerge.
It will be noted that Foucault underlines the fundamentality of error, too. At lifes
most basic level, Foucault argues following Canguilhem, the play of code and
decoding leaves room for chance, which, before being disease, deficit or
monstrosity, is something like perturbation in the information system, something
like a mistake.66 As Foucault defines it, [i]n the extreme, life is what is capable
of error.67 Most characteristic of life are chance, contingency and difference. That
is to say that life is irreducible and undecidable and cannot be laid out in
advance. Thus, if Deleuze and Guattaris reading of Darwin uncovers the
centrality and immanence of perturbation, chance and disorder(ing) and hence
the superfluity and excess characteristic of life Kant and Hayek seek to render
invisible and neutralise these aspect through an image political life that operates
via (the reproduction of) circulation.

In the latter image, lifes political

requirements and capacities are bound up with governance and the nexus
security-freedom.
The notion of excess does, however, not merely feature in an involutionary
reading

of

Darwins evolutionary thought.

Darwin

himself

broaches the

importance of excess in terms of encounters and forms of interaction that cannot

be rationalised according to the survival of the fittest. In addition to natural
selection, Darwin introduces the notion of sexual selection, which depends not
on a struggle for existence, but on a struggle between the males for possession
65 Ansell Pearson, Germinal Life, p. 151.
66 Foucault, Michel, Introduction in Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological,
Carolyn R. Fawcett (transl.). New York: Zone Books, 1989, pp. 22-23.

67 Ibid., p. 22.
24

of the females; the result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor but few or
no offspring.68 Grosz suggests that sexual selection is characterised merely by
courtship and pleasure as opposed to those qualities that facilitate survival. Yet,
Darwin himself describes sexual selection in terms of an advantage of males in
terms of their weapons, means of defence or charms. 69 In most species, he
remarks, struggle constitutes a primary feature of sexual selection. Groszs
analysis is nevertheless valuable insofar as it elucidates that, according to
Darwin, there is something more to (the reproduction of) life than a struggle for
survival pure and simple: the process of selection features in addition a play of
sexual taste, appeal and pleasure.70 As Darwin himself notes in relation to birds,
in which the contest is generally more peaceful,

there is the severest rivalry between the males of many species to

attract by singing the females. The rock-thrush of Guiana, birds of
Paradise, and some others, congregate; and successive males display
their gorgeous plumage and perform strange antics before the females,
which, standing by as spectators, at last choose the most attractive
partner.71
Reproduction contains a non-instrumental aspect, in which transformations are
not necessarily useful or beneficial, yet always creative of a difference that
cannot be predicted in advance i.e. becoming.

Conclusion
How does a conception of evolution qua difference and complexity help us move
beyond the systematic violence that takes place beneath the smooth surface of
Kant and Hayeks visions of society?

This silent war 72 undermines the

emancipatory pretensions of, and depoliticises, their political projects. It is, we

argue, by embracing rather than denouncing as dangerous and domesticating
68 Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 68.
69 Ibid., p. 70.
70 Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art, p. 33.
71 Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 69.
72 Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, p. 16.
25

the difference that lies at the basis of their visions biological and political life that
conceptualising resistance to biopower becomes possible.
Present in all three accounts in Kant, Hayek and Darwin is an economy of
inclusion and exclusion, which functions as an economy of life or, perhaps, an
economy of life and death. For Kant, both life and politics are to be understood
on the basis of (self-)organisation and circulation. This conceptualisation
produces a distinction between life that circulates on the basis of its understood
nature and rogue or rebellious forces endangering liberal society. The erection of
a boundary between relations and forms of life understood to be productive, and
to be fostered, and those that must be eradicated is bluntly articulated by Kant,
who asserts in Perpetual Peace that [t]he saying let justice reign even if all the
rogues in the world must perish is true; it is a sound principle of right. 73
Moreover, the prohibition of resistance is absolute:
all the incitements of the subjects to violent expressions of discontent, all
defiance which breaks out into rebellion, is the greatest and most
punishable crime in the commonwealth, for it destroys its very
foundations. This prohibition is absolute.74
Hayek, too, produces an onto-politics of freedom based on security. That is to
say, a notion of freedom produced through and operating on the basis of an
economy of inclusion and exclusion tribal life versus adaptive life which
naturalises and universalises liberal order.

Despite Hayeks adoption of

complexity the open society assumes the same operative principle as Kants
vision of political life, according to which only a specific form of life is considered
worthy.
The economy of life characteristic of standard neo-Darwinism renders this
mechanism more explicit: adapt or die. This paper has, however, provided a
different reading of Darwin in which movement and relations gain primacy over
instituted forms. Sexual selection, which Darwin elaborates in addition to natural
selection, goes beyond instrumentality and the prioritisation of the struggle of
73 Kant, Perpetual Peace, p. 123.
74 Kant, Perpetual Peace, p. 81. See also: Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, pp. 143 & 162.
26

life and death in which the best adapted triumph. Instead, sexual selection, as a
play of sexual appeal and pleasure, operates on the basis of excess and
becoming. Secondly, engaging Darwin in terms of becoming beyond filiative
reproduction, life is characterised by its perturbation more than by its
preservation for chance, error and resistance are both immanent and anterior to
forms of (self-)organisation. Hence it is our suggestion that a starting point for
the repoliticisation of life is a different approach to the question of what political
life is and may become, an approach that starts with and embraces forces of
difference and becoming rather centralising the self-interested individual and
neutralising the forces of war and resistance at the heart of a so-called open
society.

27