Dentro la vita.

Topologia, biopolitica e bergsonismo

Abstract

“Bergsonism” is mostly understood as a metaphysics of time and kept at distance from the current biopolitical debate. This essay argues that, in the wake of Gilles Deleuze’s reinvention of Henri Bergson’s philosophy, vitalism can be understood as an unprecedented topological thought, a technique of insertion of human actions within life forces, and thus serve as a key element for the construction of an “affirmative bio- politics”. In order to achieve this project, the essay reinterprets some of Bergson’s main categories — “intuition”, “interval”, “cut”, “effort” — and confronts the anti–vitalist perspectives of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben, illustrating their theological illusionism and their bias against «natural life». In opposition to them, the essay explores the connections that link topological Bergsonism with the biopolitical thought of Michel Foucault, calling for the invention of new practices of contact between life and action.