This semester, I’m taking the course Environmental Justice. Although I wasn’t quite prepared for the amount of reading I’d be doing this fall, I was pleasantly surprised at what we read for Week 4 – Nadia Kim’s Fighting for Breath in the Other LA, an introduction to the book Refusing Death. Kim’s work analyzes the intersectionality of environmental injustices through a framework explicitly including gender. Something that stood out to me, however, was her discussion of Foucault.

In Week 2 of Unruly Bodies, we discussed Foucault’s idea of biopower; the power of life and how it is controlled. Kim is critical of this concept, however. She argues that Foucault focused too heavily on biopower’s dimension of making life, and not enough on the ability to “let die”. She states, “[Foucault] does not tell us about a state that circulates deadly air.” (p27). Here, she proposes the term bioneglect, not to replace biopower, but to instead add to it. Essentially, the term bioneglect stands to emphasize the “…process of ‘letting die’ waged by neoliberal racial capitalism and the racial state.” (p27). What this means is, where biopower represents the power of life, bioneglect represents the power of discriminating against and neglecting life. Kim discusses how communities made up of low income individuals and people of color are targeted by bioneglect, leading to problems such as health disparities caused by higher rates of pollution, among other issues. This is perpetuated by the (in)actions of the government as well as large corporations.

I think Kim’s addendum to Foucault’s concept of biopower is important when discussing environmental injustices such as these in particular. The struggles faced through environmental injustices are inherently tied to our bodies and how we experience them, as the forces that control our bodies – whether they be large corporations and governments or on smaller community scales – also have the power to control the environment around us; they control everything from the policies we keep to the norms we follow, for better or for worse. The work we are expected and forced to do under capitalism is also directly intertwined with environmental injustices, as it is inherently unsustainable, though not through our own fault. All in all, I believe Kim’s concept of bioneglect is a useful addition to the conversation of biopower proposed by Foucault, one that is necessary to consider when trying to understand the full scope of the effect of larger powers on life.

Image source: https://www.sustainableprinceton.org/explainer-series-2-environmental-justice/