Neoliberalism and the duty to die: biopolitical and psychopolitical perspectives

This paper aims to explore and offer different hypotheses that could account for an adequate understanding of the duty to die and its relation to biopolitics from two neglected approaches. First, death will be analysed from a biopolitical perspective to understand the crucial role it has in biopower. Second, the focus lies on the two-folded implication that death has in biopower, for it could be either a defiance of it or the final sublimation of its control. Similarly, the next section addresses the relations between death and neoliberalism from a biopolitical perspective, exploring the possibility of understanding the duty to die as resistance to economic mandates or, on the contrary, as the fulfilment of neoliberal interests. Finally, as a continuation of the relations between the duty to die and neo-liberalism, the paper analyses a similar two-folded view of the former from a psychopolitical perspective.