The Biopolitics of Souls

• Author: Simona Forti
• Date: 01 February 2006
• Published date: 01 February 2006
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591705280526
• Subject Matter: Articles

10.1177/0090591705280526Political TheoryForti / The Biopolitics of Souls

The Biopolitics of Souls

Racism, Nazism, and Plato

Simona Forti

Università del Piemonte Orientale, Alessandria, Italy

This essay focuses on the relationship between biopolitics and race theory.

Starting from Foucault, many authors have considered totalitarian anti-Semi-

tism as a depravity of biologism. This essay would like to challenge this all-

too-simple positivist, materialist, and evolutionist picture of biopolitics in the

Third Reich. It examines another “tradition” of racial theories, central to

National Socialism, much closer to the reveredWestern philosophical tradition

than Darwinism ever was. This kind of racism presents itself as the authentic

heir of that “Metaphysics of Form,” which traces its roots back to classical

antiquity,in particular to Plato’s work.Through the analysis of some Platonist

and racist texts the essay tries to point out the ambivalencesthat connect some

of the assumptions of our philosophical tradition to Nazi totalitarianism.

Keywords: biopolitics; race theory; totalitarianism; Nazism; Platonism;

Western philosophical tradition; relationshipof body-soul

The title of this essay is intended to be an oxymoron.1The term

“biopolitics” is generally used to describe a “politics of the body” or, to

be precise, politics for the entire body of the population. The transformation

of political power into biopower has often been accompanied by the dis-

courses on race, which, from the middle of the nineteenth century, had begun

to acquire a scientific standing. Nazi totalitarianism is often considered the

extreme and emblematic example of a biopolitics that legitimizes itself on the

basis of racial assumptions, intimately connected to the “new sciences” of

life. In this essay, I would like to challenge this all-too-simple positivist,

materialist, and evolutionist picture of biopolitics in the Third Reich. My

challenge emerges out of a reexamination of some “exemplary” texts of

“Nazi philosophical anthropology.” While it is true that racism redefines

man’s identity through a system of biological propositions, reaching out to a

total control over life, it is also true that race is not always, or simply, identi-

fied with a biological and genetic heritage. Perhaps because of an anxious-

ness to reassuringly bracket totalitarianism as an exception of pathology and

9

Political Theory

Volume 34 Number 1

February 2006 9-32

© 2006 Sage Publications

10.1177/0090591705280526

http://ptx.sagepub.com

hosted at

http://online.sagepub.com

of irrationality,research has focused almost exclusivelyin the direction of an

aberrant political outcome of evolutionism. Insufficient attention has been

paid to another “tradition” of racial theories, less intimately connected to

Darwinism. This was a theory present at the beginning of the twentieth cen-

tury in Germany and in France, and it was absolutely central to National

Socialism. This theory was also much closer to the revered Western philo-

sophical tradition than Darwinism ever was. It was built around the relation-

ship between body and soul in a manner that throws into disarray the simple

assumptions of evolutionism.

This kind of racism cannot be considered a simple depravity of biologism:

It presents itself as the authentic heir of that “metaphysics of form” that traces

its roots back to classical antiquity, in particular to Plato’s work. Shedding

light on the “idealistic” and Platonic aspects of Nazism is not the same as

stating that Plato is totalitarian. I do not share the Popperian view according

to which Plato’s political program is in itself a totalitarianproject. More gen -

erally, I am not interpreting totalitarianism, and first of all Nazism, as a nec-

essary outcome of the Western philosophical tradition. My argument is that

any attempt to establish some continuity between “our” culture and the Nazi

Regime needs to be presented in a more careful and complex manner. But I

will also question the thesis that Nazism constitutes a sudden break in the

noble history of philosophy, according to which it simply meant the collapse

of philosophical values, such as universalism, humanism, and rationalism.

Through the analysis of certain Platonist and racist texts I will elucidate cer-

tain ambivalences that connect some of the assumptions of our philosophical

tradition to Nazi totalitarianism.

I. Biopolitics and Totalitarianism

In the mid-1970s, Michel Foucault introduced into his analysis of powera

new concept, that of biopolitics.2Through this concept he intended to desig-

nate a new configuration of relations of domination. From the end of the

eighteenth century onward, political power progressively took over respon-

sibility for the population, as a “living mass.” Biopower therefore started to

distinguish itself from “traditional” sovereign power not just because of its

all-inclusive nature; it also addressed directly the “productivity” of life. It no

longer concentrated on the individual and his property, through the power of

the law; rather it affects directly,and in a “positive” way, the biological pro-

cesses of the entire population. Biopolitics thus began to address (as an

object of power) life itself: birth, reproduction, illness, and death. Through

10 Political Theory