Published Online:March 2026
Product Name:The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type:Article
Product Code:IJES060326
DOI:10.71329/IUPJES/2026.21.1.61-68
Author Name:Sonali Das
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Arts and Humanities
Download Format:PDF
Pages:61-68
This paper reads Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra through the lens of ‘biopolitics’, drawing on Michel Foucault’s account of state governance over life. Although Shakespeare’s play precedes the modern political theory of biopolitics, it stages an interim period in which imperial authority controlled bodies, regulated sexuality, and checked desires that clashed with state duty. Rome, especially under Octavius Caesar, imposed strict regulations that considered desires secondary to governmental order. Antony’s attachment to Cleopatra is shown not just as a moral failure but as a political disobedience: his body, once a fierce force to expand empires, becomes a site of excess that overturns stately dominance. In contrast, Egypt operates through pleasure, luxury, passion, and love, where Cleopatra’s body becomes the center of political power. The lovers’ deaths mark the fierce incorporation of a new imposing order. Caesar’s intention to display Cleopatra in public as a mark of his victory embodies the integration of subjugated bodies into state display; her suicide resists this intention, regaining agency over organic being. Reading the play biopolitically reveals the tragedy not simply as a defeat of love, but as a setback to enigmatic and sensual independence under state control. Thus, the play spotlights the emergence of stately authority as a mighty force that limits the sovereignty of human life.
Biopolitics’ is a concept in political theory that debates about the way political power limits, restrains, and controls human life mainly through policies, organizations, and cultural frameworks