On biodiplomacy: Negotiating life and plural modes of existence
| Published date | 01 October 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088219877423 |
| Author | Costas M Constantinou,Sam Okoth Opondo |
| Date | 01 October 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088219877423
Journal of International Political Theory
2021, Vol. 17(3) 316 –336
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088219877423
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On biodiplomacy:
Negotiating life and plural
modes of existence
Costas M Constantinou
University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Sam Okoth Opondo
Vassar College, USA
Abstract
This article examines the intersection of biopolitics with diplomacy and engages its dynamic
re-envisioning as biodiplomacy. It revisits Michel Foucault’s peripheral attention to diplomacy
and his framing of the concept in his writings on raison d’état and the government of the
living. The article suggests that biodiplomacy can help us understand better the complexity
of global biopolitical projects, moving us beyond governmentality and sensitizing us about
the continuous negotiation of the meaning and materiality of particular ways of living vis-
à-vis other ways of being. Specifically, the article addresses modes of existence peculiar to
the postcolony or encompassing antithetical value systems and argues that biodiplomacy
opens up a wider field of ethical and cosmopolitical possibilities by making visible the
interconnected plurality of human and non-human forces.
Keywords
Biocolonialism, biopolitics, cosmopolitics, diplomacy, modes of existence
Basically, since the great dividing up of Italy the question has always been first of all that of the
composition and compensation of forces, that is to say, the primacy [of] diplomacy . . . This
was undoubtedly true before Italian unity, and it is no doubt also true after the realization of
Italian unity and the constitution of something like an Italian state, a state that has never really
been a state of police, . . . and which has always been a state of diplomacy, that is to say, a set
of plural forces between which an equilibrium must be established, between political parties,
trade unions, clienteles, the Church, the North, the South, the mafia, and so on, which resulted
in Italy being a state of diplomacy without being a state of police.
—Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population (2007: 412; our italics)
Corresponding author:
Costas M Constantinou, University of Cyprus, 1 Panepistimiou Avenue, Aglantzia, Nicosia 1678, Cyprus.
Email: constantinou.m.costas@ucy.ac.cy
877423IPT0010.1177/1755088219877423Journal of International Political TheoryConstantinou and Opondo
research-article2019
Article
Constantinou and Opondo 317
Introduction: Within and beyond global governance
Attempts to secure human and non-human life around the globe have given rise to gov-
ernmental techniques through which modern power extends itself within and across ter-
ritories, populations, and species. Engaging plural modes of existence has opened up
space for normative experimentation in protecting life, devising “lively legalities” that
“en-list,” “up-list,” and “un-list” various species, thus marking some of them as invasive
or pollutants to be exterminated, while others are identified as benign, valuable, or
endangered, needing protection through a liberal discourse of rights (Braverman, 2016:
11). Governing habitats which are supposed to be in most need is a major and complex
affair, as what is vital for each and every species cannot be completely known or agreed
upon, let alone, be secured. Even the less ambitious claim concerning the human species,
that is, that “no one will be left behind,” as proclaimed in the 2030 UN Agenda for
“transforming our world” (United Nations, 2015), is at best a wishful thinking, and at
worst, the latest form of intergovernmental hypocrisy.
As we argue in this article, the increasing contestation of governmental techniques not
only from above but also from below (Hardt and Negri, 2001, 2005; McNay, 2009) inevi-
tably intersects with the diplomatic in ways that both inform and transform what it means
to practice a politics of life in the twenty-first century. Like any other key term with long
historical usage, diplomacy has been diversely perceived and conceived. We are particu-
larly interested in broaching more “philosophical” and “transformative” understandings
of diplomacy, which cross disciplinary boundaries. This unavoidably imports the epis-
temic tensions of the various fields of study upon which we draw below (e.g. critical
humanism, postcolonialism, posthumanism, ethology, new materialism, and so on).
While acknowledging the risks of this associative and shifting perspective across diverse
fields of study, we consider it worthwhile to attempt to “mix things together” rather than
simply go “deeply” in one direction. The insights of “shallow ontology” and the relation-
ality upon which it draws are in sync with the complexity of the world we live in and the
task of theorizing it (Latour, 2005). No doubt, offering new perspectives with explana-
tory potential should remain the test of our intersection of diplomacy with the global
governance of life.
Viewed more philosophically as an opening to an other’s life and ways of being-
in-the-world, diplomacy engenders the recognition of alterity and ethical engage-
ment in the midst of power (Sofer, 2013), reflexive thinking and critical humanism
(Constantinou, 2013), and ultimately negotiations that persist in finding ways out of
complex problems (Latour, 2013; Stengers, 2011). Through diplomacy, one explores
different ways of being, methods of agreeing and disagreeing, and devises modi viv-
endi whenever comprehensive agreements prove difficult to reach (Constantinou,
2012). To that extent, diplomacy can be supportive of government policy but also
resists it. It recognizes the limits of government while acknowledging difference and
possibility in the assemblage of human and non-human potentialities affecting rela-
tionships (Dittmer, 2017; Tsing, 2014). Ultimately, linking diplomacy to questions of
life and modes of existence can be productive in thinking life and co-existence within
and beyond the governmental milieu.
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