(Psychoanalytic) biopolitics & bioracism

The present, very timely, issue of Umbr(a) is organized around the observation that the "three points [that] crystallize the worst of our present situation" are "the neutralization of politics, the proliferation of new crises, and the total management of life." I pick the final point - biopolitics - as the direct focus of my essay and, thus, modify the ensuing question as follows: "How would a psychoanalytically informed understanding of 'the worst' inform contemporary biopolitics?" Addressing this question amounts to addressing, as we shall see, the apparently ultimate question raised by the editors of the issue: "What is the worst that can happen to a subject? Is biological death truly the worst [ ... ]?" Given that in tackling these concerns I will be introducing a psychoanalytically informed theory of biopolitics, this essay also addresses the possible alternative menace through which the editors voluntarily retract their own question to the penultimate position: "or, could it" - the worst - "rather be life lived outside the insights offered by psychoanalysis?"