The farmer suicides that have taken place in India since the 1990s constitute the largest wave of recorded suicides in human history. While existing research largely focuses on explaining the causes that lead farmers to take their own lives, this paper examines the biopolitical governing function that the suicides have. The paper argues that the farmer suicides have functioned to legitimate intervention into the lives of those who remain by either treating them as subjects with mental health problems or educating them on how to embrace a neoliberal entrepreneurial mentality. The farmer suicides arguably also function to dispose of a population that has become surplus in the contemporary developmental vision of the Indian state. Furthermore, the paper contests biopolitical theorization that views suicide or death as resistance to biopower, arguing that it fails to recognize both the particularity of biopolitics in a context where the presence of death is ubiquitous and the way in which the death of some may reinforce the biopolitical governing of life of others. The farmer suicides express rather than contest the devaluation of ‘unproductive’ lives in neoliberal capitalism.

中文翻译：

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农民自杀与死亡在新自由主义生物政治中的作用

自1990年代以来在印度发生的农民自杀是人类历史上记录的最大的自杀浪潮。尽管现有研究主要集中于解释导致农民自杀的原因，但本文研究了自杀具有的生物政治管理功能。该论文认为，农民自杀通过对残障者的生活进行合法干预，通过将其视为有精神健康问题的对象，或者通过教育他们如何接受新自由主义的企业家心态来发挥作用。可以说，农民自杀也起着处理已经在印度国家当代发展视野中变得过剩的人口的作用。此外，该论文还质疑将自杀或死亡视为对生物权力的抵抗的生物政治理论，他们认为，在死刑无处不在的背景下，它既没有认识到生物政治的特殊性，也没有认识到某些人的死亡可能加强其他人生命的生物政治统治。农民自杀表达了新自由主义资本主义中“非生产性”生活的贬值，而不是对其进行质疑。