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title: BIOPOLITICAL ECONOMY AND ARBITRARY POWER

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# BIOPOLITICAL ECONOMY AND ARBITRARY POWER

One of the key questions that has guided my work - and is also behind the ECSA-project - is the mutation of capitalism and the necessity to create new concepts for understanding economy and its organization. Significant part of my research has traced the mutation of economic formation of value and the capitalist form of production both historically and logically. I have developed concepts such as *arbitrary power*, *semiocapital* and *biopolitical economy* in order to rethink and conceptualize economy and its organization from the same premise that has led political philosophy to speak of *biopolitics*. Why? Because if this premise is the absolute condition for thinking politics today (as Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Hannah Arendt for example have stated), it must be so also for thinking economy - since what is at stake in this premise is the general dissolution of the boundaries between economy and other areas of life. 

RELATED PUBLICATIONS

Virtanen Akseli (2006)  Biopoliittisen talouden kritiikki. Modernin talouden loppu ja mielivallan synty  [A Critique of Biopolical Economy. The End of Modern Economy and the Birth of Arbitrary Power]. Tutkijaliitto, Polemos-series, Helsinki. 278 pages.  The book is published in English as Arbitrary power. Towards a Critique of Biopolitical Economy and in Portuguese as Crítica da Economia Biopolitica by n-1 Edições.

Virtanen Akseli (2006) [**General Intellect**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/HkdzRAE0s)

Virtanen Akseli (2006) [**Oikos, polis, nomos**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/B10RPOCV2)

Virtanen Akseli (2006) [**General Intellect**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/HkdzRAE0s)

Virtanen Akseli (2006) [**Sign machines**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/ryfHa1aLh)

Virtanen Akseli (2006) [**Modulation**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/rytPIeTL3)

Virtanen Akseli (2006) [**What is a statement (énoncé)?**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/SyTKlxjd2)


Virtanen Akseli (2010) Immaterial as Material, TkH: Journal for the Theory of Performing Arts, 4/2010.

Berardi Franco & Akseli Virtanen (2010) Mielivallasta morfogeneesiin / [**From Arbitrary Power to Morphogenesis**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/B133TY0N2?utm_source=preview-mode&utm_medium=rec). Niin & näin, 3/2010.

Virtanen Akseli (2008) Arbitrary Power. Or on Organization without End. In The Swedish Dance History. Inpex, Stockholm. pp 177-195.

Vähämäki Jussi & Akseli Virtanen (2006) Deleuze, change, history. In Fuglsang & Sorenssen (eds.) Gilles Deleuze and the Social: Towards a New Social Analytic. Edinburgh University Press.

Virtanen Akseli (2006), Entries “Taloudellinen elämä [Economic life]” pp. 125-129, “Markkinatunnelma [Market sentiment]” pp. 213-220, “Biopoliittinen talous [Biopolitical economy]”  pp. 221-234, and “Mielivalta [Arbitrary power]” pp. 465-481 in Uuden työn sanakirja [The Dictionary of New Work]. Tutkijaliitto, Helsinki.

Virtanen Akseli ed. (2005) Permanent Transience: The Structure of Change. Special Issue. Framework. The Finnish Art Review 4/2005: 1-136.

Virtanen Akseli & Steffen Böhm eds. (2005) Web of Capturing the Moving Mind. Issue X. Ephemera. Theory and Politics in Organization 5(X): 662-795.

Virtanen Akseli & Jussi Vähämäki eds. (2004) Theory of the Multitude. Special issue. Ephemera. Theory and Politics in Organization 4(3): 177-308.

Virtanen Akseli & Jussi Vähämäki (2005), Ontology. In Jones C. (ed.) Manifestos for the Business School of Tomorrow. Dvalin, Stockholm. pp.105-113.

Virtanen Akseli (2004), General Economy. The Entrance of Multitude into Production. Ephemera. Theory and Politics in Organization 4(3): 209-232.

![](https://i.imgur.com/2RcIf53.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/Ts0FEU9.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/0Wb3hJN.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/AipKJpR.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/hXDVjsl.png)





