Before the winter school “Biopower and Semiotics of the Body” in Kääriku, I had never really deeply considered such a theory, always having focused on the wider world of international relations and political science. Having just recently developed an interest in semiotics due to my friends in the programme here, I decided that I should at least try to understand the discipline more completely. As for biopower and biopolitics, I had nothing more than a cursory understanding from scanning articles on Wikipedia – nonetheless, I found the concepts completely fascinating and needed to know more. Setting out from Tartu’s bus station with a couple of close friends from here at the university, I had absolutely no expectations for the coming week because I had absolutely no idea what to expect in the first place.
Participants of the winter school “Biopower and Semiotics of the Body”, organised by the Johann Skytte Institute of Political Studies. Photo credit: Olena Solohub
Biopolitics primarily concerns the regulation of the human body, and in some cases, of the mind as well. Ironically, the experience at the winter school gave all the participants an opportunity to free ourselves from that very regulation of work and traditional academic environment in the cool embrace of Estonian foothills that surround Kääriku. Through the study of biopolitics in such an environment, we could discuss the regulation of humans while unregulating ourselves, connecting with other people from disparate cultures, continents, and backgrounds. Together, hailing from Estonia, Russia, the United States, Germany, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, and Taiwan and coming from disciplines ranging from political science and semiotics to law, economics, and medicine, we forged new understandings and connections all by coming together in the heart of the Estonian wilderness.
