From Biopolitics to Common Immunity : The Role of Michel Foucault in the Philosophy of Roberto Esposito

One of the thinkers of Contemporary French Philosophy who has been particularly influential in Esposito’s philosophy is certainly Michel Foucault. As it is known, Esposito’s relevant concept of “affermative biopolitics” is rooted in a critical reading of Foucauldian biopolitics and its impact on recent philosophical debates. Starting from the crucial link between politics and life highlighted by Foucault, in his book Bios. biopolitica e filosofia (Einaudi, Torino 2004) Esposito explores all its implications: from its thanatopolitical outcome to its potential, further reversal in the possibility of affirming a politics of life. In the last two years, following the event of the pandemic, the Foucauldian concept of biopolitics has become once again the focus of philosophical attention, in a debate to which Esposito has made an important contribution with his most recent book: Immunità comune. Biopolitica all’epoca della pandemia (Einaudi, Torino 2022). Although Foucault’s presence is clearly visible in many other aspects of Esposito’s philosophy, in these two moments Esposito’s dialogue with Foucault is particularly intense and it allows him to take part in important political-philosophical debates, concerning some urgent issues of our present time. In Foucault’s terms, we could say that Esposito’s dialogue with this French philosopher is often part of that crucial, philosophical task called by Foucault the “diagnosis of our present”. This chapter aims to investigate these two moments of Esposito’s dialogue with Foucault, in order to highlight their philosophical and political implications.