Experiential biopolitics: pandemic essays on the life of experience

This thesis outlines a conceptualisation of experiential biopolitics. Empirically, it grounds this conceptualisation in an observation of a transversal governmental concern for experiences of living-through the Covid-19 pandemic. It argues that experiential biopolitics marks a variation of a traditional biopolitics of the population. Enabled through a recalibration of the biopolitical imaginary of life that acknowledges life’s capacity to nurture experience, experiential biopolitics is conceptualised as a mode of governance that reflexively observes experiences of governance to gauge the limits of its own functioning.