Abstract

This article explores how the people and landscape of the Bay of Bengal came to be cast in terms of what Giorgio Agamben called ‘bare life’ – a people without the protection or mandate of sovereign law – in the international discourse of the early 1970s. This was a period marked in the emerging nation of Bangladesh by cyclone, war and famine. International actors were influenced by Malthusian notions of the need for ‘triage’ in relation to international food security, but also by counter-currents marked by a humanitarian impulse to aid this disaster-prone and populous poor country. This article discusses prominent examples of the framing of the Bangladesh development challenge as a Herculean effort of uncertain outcome, arguing that this framing licensed a kind of humanitarian experimentalism that has pervaded Bangladesh’s national development project, and shaped international development more broadly. Geopolitics exert biopower over the Bangladeshi population in new and different ways, but the nation state now exercises greater control over the conditions of bare life than in the 1970s, and is better able to protect its people.

摘要

本文探讨了在 1970 年代初期的国际话语中，孟加拉湾的人民和景观如何被塑造成乔治·阿甘本所说的“赤裸裸的生活”——一个没有主权法保护或授权的人民。这是一个以飓风、战争和饥荒为标志的新兴国家孟加拉国的时期。国际行动者受到马尔萨斯关于国际粮食安全需要“分流”的观念的影响，但也受到以人道主义冲动为特征的逆流的影响，以帮助这个易受灾害和人口众多的贫穷国家。本文讨论了将孟加拉国发展挑战视为结果不确定的艰巨努力的突出例子，认为这种框架许可了一种人道主义实验主义，这种实验主义已经遍及孟加拉国的国家发展项目，并更广泛地影响了国际发展。地缘政治以新的和不同的方式对孟加拉国人口施加生物力量，但与 1970 年代相比，民族国家现在对赤裸裸的生活条件拥有更大的控制权，并且能够更好地保护其人民。