The ‘Vital Core:’ from Bare Life to the Biopolitics of Human Security

Abstract

Since 11 September 2001, ‘security talk’ is everywhere — a quotidian presence in airports, international borders and Sunday morning talk shows; the reason for detaining ‘enemy combatants’ without charge and digitizing foreign visitors’ fingerprints and retinas; a growth industry for private security guards in gated communities and private military contractors specializing in covert ‘ops’ — the putative trace of ‘the war on terror’. In the name of ‘security’, the state claims that it must identify and ‘file away’ ‘the most private and incommunicable aspects of subjectivity … the body’s biological life’ as part of the ‘the new normal bio-political relationship between citizens and states’ (Agamben 2004).² Security’s ubiquity even extends beyond neo-conservatives’ agendas to the world of bourgeois consumers who hire private security guards and live behind gated communities in a world where ‘security’ has become just one more must-have accessory.

The term ‘vital core’ comes from Sabina Alkire (2002) whose work provided a foundational conceptual paper for the work of the UN’s Commission on Human Security. Her use of such biological terminology reflects both the intentional and unreflected biologism of human security discourse discussed in this chapter.