A certain latitude: Georges Canguilhem, bio-politics and life errancy

Abstract

AbstractThis article aims to discuss the possibility of a bio-political approach that wouldn't be just the description of disciplinary mechanisms of bodies' administration and the calculating administration of life, but that could provide the ground for a social criticism of contemporary capitalism. This bio-political approach is derived from Georges Canguilhem's vitalism with its discussions about vital normativity, the relationship between normal and pathological and the characteristic errancy of vital activity. At the end, we will see how the inner process of the concept of life could appear as a major strategy for the reorientation of critical thought and a theory on the concept of norms.