Biopolitics in the context of "Colonial control"

Colonialism is the practice of extending and maintaining political, social, economic, and cultural domination over a territory and its people by another people in pursuit of interests defined in an often distant metropole, who also claim superiority. While frequently an imperialist project, colonialism functions through differentiating between the targeted land and people, and that of the colonizers (a critical component of colonization). Rather than annexation, this typically culminates in organizing the colonized into colonies separate to the colonizers' metropole. Colonialism sometimes deepens by developing settler colonialism, whereby settlers from one or multiple colonizing metropoles occupy a territory with the intention of partially or completely supplanting the existing indigenous peoples, possibly amounting to genocide.

Colonialism monopolizes power by understanding conquered land and people to be inferior, based on beliefs of entitlement and superiority, justified with beliefs of having a civilizing mission to cultivate land and life, historically often rooted in the belief of a Christian mission. These beliefs and the actual colonization establish a so-called coloniality, which keeps the colonized socio-economically othered and subaltern through modern biopolitics of sexuality, gender, race, disability and class, among others, resulting in intersectional violence and discrimination.

Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppression; and the relationships between power and gender as they intersect with other identities and social locations such as race, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, and disability.

Popular concepts that are related to the field of women's studies include feminist theory, standpoint theory, intersectionality, multiculturalism, transnational feminism, social justice, Matrixial gaze, affect studies, agency, bio-politics, materialism, and embodiment. Research practices and methodologies associated with women's studies include ethnography, autoethnography, focus groups, surveys, community-based research, discourse analysis, and reading practices associated with critical theory, post-structuralism, and queer theory. The field researches and critiques different societal norms of gender, race, class, sexuality, and other social inequalities.

Giorgio Agamben (/əˈɡæmbən/ ə-GAM-bən; Italian: [ˈdʒordʒo aˈɡamben]; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher whose work spans political theory, ontology, aesthetics, and literature. He is best known for developing the concepts of the state of exception and homo sacer, which explore the relationship between sovereignty, legal authority, and what he calls 'bare life'. His writings draw on sources including Aristotle, Roman law, Christian theology, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, St. Augustine and Carl Schmitt among others, and engage critically with Michel Foucault’s account of biopolitics and biopower. Agamben’s multi-volume Homo Sacer project has been widely discussed within political philosophy, jurisprudence, anthropology, and the humanities, and he is considered one of the most influential writers in contemporary continental philosophy.

Agamben has held teaching and research positions at institutions including the University of Verona, the University of Macerata, the University of Palermo, and the Università Iuav di Venezia, and he has lectured widely in Europe and North America. His publications include Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995), State of Exception (2003), The Kingdom and the Glory (2007), and The Use of Bodies (2014), alongside works on language, poetry, and the history of Western metaphysics. His ideas have generated substantial scholarly debate and have influenced fields ranging from political theory to literary studies.