This article contributes to debates concerning the influence of ancient Greek political thought on contemporary biopolitics and antipolitical resistance. Building on the work of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, I first investigate the ancient roots of biopolitics in the writings of Aristotle. Innovatively combining Foucault's late lectures, Agamben's theory of form-of-life, and the critical concept of antipolitics, I next consider two paradigmatic cases of ancient resistance to biopolitics: Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic. In choosing death rather than ceasing to philosophise, I argue that Socrates affirmed the inseparability of his biological life from its (anti)political and philosophical form. While this model resists biopolitical logics, I demonstrate its limitations through a comparison between Socrates and Bartleby the Scrivener. I further argue that Diogenes’ antipolitical form-of-life more effectively evades and undermines the ontological presuppositions of biopolitics and can therefore serve as a fruitful model for resistance to biopolitics’ contemporary manifestations.
Paul Gorby (Thu,) studied this question.