"BIOCAPITALISM": NOTES ON A CONCEPT FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

The concept of "biocapitalism", barely studied in the Spanish-speaking world, emerged at the beginning of the twenty-first century as a new theory of value that is based on the Italian reception of Foucault ' s biopolitics. According to its authors, the current economic paradigm undergoes a process of subjectivation that implies that the existence becomes the "raw material" of production, which, in turn, creates new archetypes of subjectivity and new lifestyles. The growing inseparability of work and life is characteristic of this phase of capitalism: on the one hand, pre-existing jobs incorporate an increasing number of vital faculties that in the previous model were considered non-occupational; on the other, everyday existence is transformed by the presence of productive moments that take place in the margins of formally recognised work.