Biopower (or biopouvoir in French) is a term
coined by French scholar, historian, and social
theorist Michel Foucault.
It relates to the practice of modern nation
states and their regulation of their subjects
through "an explosion of numerous and diverse
techniques for achieving the subjugations
of bodies and the control of populations".
Foucault first used the term in his lecture
courses at the Collège de France, but the
term first appeared in print in The Will To
Knowledge, Foucault's first volume of The
History of Sexuality.
In Foucault's work, it has been used to refer
to practices of public health, regulation
of heredity, and risk regulation, among many
other regulatory mechanisms often linked less
directly with literal physical health.
It is closely related to a term he uses much
less frequently, but which subsequent thinkers
have taken up independently, biopolitics,
which aligns more closely with the examination
of the strategies and mechanisms through which
human life processes are managed under regimes
of authority over knowledge, power, and the
processes of subjectivation.
== Foucault's conception ==
For Foucault, biopower is a technology of
power for managing humans in large groups;
the distinctive quality of this political
technology is that it allows for the control
of entire populations.
It refers to the control of human bodies through
an anatomo-politics of the human body and
biopolitics of the population through societal
Disciplinary institutions.
Initially imposed from outside whose source
remains elusive to further investigation both
by the social sciences and the humanities,
and in fact, you could argue will remain elusive
as long as both disciplines use their current
research methods.
Modern power, according to Foucault's analysis,
becomes encoded into social practices as well
as human behavior as the human subject gradually
acquiesces to subtle regulations and expectations
of the social order.
It is an integral feature and essential to
the workings of—and makes possible—the
emergence of the modern nation state, capitalism,
etc.
Biopower is literally having power over bodies;
it is "an explosion of numerous and diverse
techniques for achieving the subjugation of
bodies and the control of populations".
Foucault elaborates further in his lecture
courses on biopower entitled Security, Territory,
Population delivered at the Collège de France
between January and April 1978:
It relates to governmental concerns of fostering
the life of the population, "an anatomo-politics
of the human body a global mass that is affected
by overall characteristics specific to life,
like birth, death, production, illness, and
so on.
It produces a generalized disciplinary society
and regulatory controls through biopolitics
of the population".
In his lecture Society Must Be Defended, Foucault
examines biopolitical state racism, and its
accomplished rationale of myth-making and
narrative.
Here he states the fundamental difference
between biopolitics and discipline:
Foucault argues that the previous Greco-Roman,
Medieval rule of the Roman emperor, the Divine
right of kings, Absolute monarchy and the
popes model of power and social control over
the body was an individualising mode based
on a singular individual, primarily the king,
Holy Roman emperor, pope and Roman emperor.
However, after the emergence of the medieval
metaphor body politic which meant society
as a whole with the ruler, in this case the
king, as the head of society with the so-called
Estates of the realm and the Medieval Roman
Catholic Church next to the monarch with the
majority of the peasant population or feudal
serfs at the bottom of the hierarchical pyramid.
This meaning of the metaphor was then codified
into medieval law for the offense of high
treason and if found guilty the sentence of
Hanged, drawn and quartered was carried out.
However, this was drastically altered in 18th
century Europe with the advent and realignment
of modern political power as opposed to the
ancient world and Medieval version of political
power.
The mass democracy of the Liberal western
world and the voting franchise was added to
the mass population; liberal democracy and
Political parties; universal adult suffrage-exclusively
male at this time, then extended to women
in Europe in 1929(most certainly as late as
1971 in Switzerland see Women's suffrage in
Switzerland), and extending to people of African
descent in America with the abolition of the
infamous Jim Crow laws in 1964 (see Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of
1965).
The emergence of the human sciences and its
subsequent direction, during the 16th and
18th centuries, primarily aimed at the modern
Western man and the society he inhabits, aided
the development of Disciplinary institution
and furthermore, Foucault cites the human
sciences, particularly the medical sciences,
led to the advent of anatomo-politics of the
human body, a biopolitics and bio-history
of man.
A transition occurred through forcible removal
of various European monarchs into a "scientific"
state apparatus and the radical overhaul of
judiciary practices coupled with the reinvention
and division of those who were to be punished.A
second mode for seizure of power was developed
as a type of power that was stochastic and
"massifying" rather than "individualizing".
By "massifying" Foucault means transforming
into a population ("population state"), with
an extra added impetus of a governing mechanism
in the form of a scientific machinery and
apparatus.
This scientific mechanism which we now know
as the State "governs less" of the population
and concentrates more on administrating external
devices.
Foucault then reminds us that this anatomo-biopoltics
of the body (and human life) and the population
correlates with the new founded knowledge
of sciences and the 'new' politics of modern
society, masquerading as liberal democracy,
where life (biological life) itself became
not only a deliberate political strategy but
an economic, political and scientific problem,
both for the Mathematical sciences and the
Biological sciences–coupled together with
the nation state.
Foucault argues that nation states, police,
government, legal practices, human sciences
and medical institutions have their own rationale,
cause and effects, strategies, technologies,
mechanisms and codes and have managed successfully
in the past to obscure their workings by hiding
behind observation and scrutiny.
Foucault insists social institutions such
as governments, laws, religion, politics,
social administration, monetary institutions,
military institutions cannot have the same
rigorous practices and procedure with claims
to independent knowledge like those of the
human and 'hard' sciences, such as mathematics,
chemistry, astronomy, physics, genetics, and
biology.
Foucault sees these differences in techniques
as nothing more than "behaviour control technologies",
and modern biopower as nothing more than a
series of webs and networks working its way
around the societal body.
However, Foucault argues the exercise of power
in the service of maximizing life carries
a dark underside.
When the state is invested in protecting the
life of the population, when the stakes are
life itself, anything can be justified.
Groups identified as the threat to the existence
of the life of the nation or of humanity can
be eradicated with impunity.
== Milieu intérieur ==
Foucault concentrates his attention on what
he calls the major political and social project
namely the Milieu (the environment within).
How did the project milieu become interwoven
into the political and social relations of
men?
Foucault takes as his starting point from
the 16th century right up until the 18th century
with the milieu culminating into the founding
disciplines of science, mathematics, political
economy and statistics.
Foucault makes an explicit point on the value
of secrecy of government (arcana imperii,
from the Latin which means secrecy of power,
secrets of the empire which goes back to the
time of the Roman empire in the age of Tacitus)
coined by Jean Bodin.
Which, Foucault argues, had to be incorporated
into a politics of truth.
Foucault insist; in referring to the term
'public opinion'('politics of truth'),the
concept of truth refers to the term 'regimes
of truth'.In which Foucault mentions a group
called The Ideologues where the term Ideology
first appears and is taken from.
It is through 'regimes of truth' Foucault
argues that raison d'état achieves its political
and biological success.
Here the modern version of government is presented
to the population in the national media, both
in the electronic medium-television and radio-and
especially in the written press, as the modicum
of efficiency, fiscal optimisation, political
responsibility, and fiscal rigorousness.
Thus, a public discourse of government solidarity
emerges and social consensus is emphasised
through these four points.
What general components were essential and
necessary to make this consensus happen?
Foucault traces the first dynamics, the first
historical dimensions belonging to the early
Middle Ages.
One major thinker which forms a parallel with
Foucault’s own work is the Medieval historian
Ernst Kantorowicz.
Kantorowicz mentions a Medieval device known
as the body politic (the king's two bodies).
This Medieval device was so well received
by legal theorists and lawyers of the day
that it was incorporated and codified into
Medieval society and institutions (Kantorowicz
mentions the term Corporation which would
later become known to us as capitalism, an
economic category).
Kantorowicz also refers to the Glossator's
belonging to a well-known branch of legal
schools in medieval Europe, experts in jurisprudence
and law science, appeal of treason, The Lords
Appellant and the commentaries of jurist Edmund
Plowden and his Plowden Reports.
In Kantorowicz analysis, a Medieval Political
theology emerged throughout the Middle Ages
which provided the modern basis for the democratisation
of the hereditary succession of a wealthy
elite and for our own modern political hierarchical
order (Politicians) and their close association
with the wealthy nobility.
Primarily, the democratisation of Sovereignty,
which is known in modern political terms as
"Liberal democracy".
Kantorowicz argues a Medieval triumvirate
appears(with the support of the legal machine),
a private enterprise of wealth and succession
both supporting the fixed hierarchical order
reserved exclusively for the nobility and
their descendants, and the monarch and her/his
heirs.
Co-operation was needed by the three groups—the
Monarchy, the Church, and the Nobility—in
an uneasy Medieval alliance and at times,
it appeared fractious.
Throughout its history, it was never a smooth
arrangement; see Barons war.
What is the reasoning behind the whole population
subservience with the worshiping of state
emblems, symbols and related mechanisms with
their associates who represent the institutional
mechanism (democratization of sovereignty);
where fierce loyalty from the population is
presented, in modern times as universal admiration
for the president, the monarch, the Pope and
the prime minister, one could argue is it
irony or fierce logic that dictates this sort
of behaviour.
Well, which one is it?
Foucault would argue that while all the cost
benefits were met by the new founded urban
population in the form of production and Political
power that it is precisely this type of behaviour
which keeps the well-oiled machine smoothly
ticking over and ultimately giving the Nation
state not only its rationale but its "governing
less" impenetrable apparatus.
In other words, it is dictated by our own
inherited political rationality which gives
the false impression and appearance of joint
solidarity giving the machine (Foucault uses
the term Dispositif) not only legitimacy but
an air of invincibility from its main primary
sources: reason, truth, freedom, and human
existence.
Foucault makes special note on the biological
"naturalness" of the human species and the
new founded scientific interest that was developing
around not only with the species interaction
with milieu and technology, but most importantly,
technology operating as system not as so often
portrayed by the political and social sciences
which insisted on technology operating as
social improvement.
Both milieu, natural sciences and technology,
allied with the characteristics surrounding
social organization and increasingly the categorization
of the sciences to help deal with this "naturalness"
of milieu and of the inscription of truth
onto nature.
Due to Foucault's discussions with Georges
Canguilhem, Foucault notices that not only
was milieu now a newly discovered scientific
biological naturalness ever-present in Lamarckian
Biology the notion (biological naturalness)
was actually invented and imported from Newtonian
mechanics (Classical mechanics) via Georges-Louis
Leclerc, Comte de Buffon due to Buffon mentorship
and friendship with Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
and used by Biology in the middle of the 18th
century borrowing from Newton the explanatory
model of an organic reaction through the action
of "milieu Newtonian" physics used by Isaac
Newton and the Newtonians.
Humans (the species being mentioned in Marx)
were now both the object of this newly discovered
scientific and "natural" truth and new categorization,
but subjected to it allied by laws, both scientific
and natural law (scientific Jurisprudence),
the state's mode of governmental rationality
to the will of its population.
But, most importantly, interaction with the
social environment and social interactions
with others and the modern nation state's
interest in the populations well-being and
the destructive capability that the state
possess in its armoury and it was with the
group who called themselves the économistes
(Vincent de Gournay, François Quesnay, François
Véron Duverger de Forbonnais, and Anne-Robert-Jacques
Turgot) who continued with the rationalization
of this "naturalness".
Foucault notices that this "naturalness" continues
and is extended further with the advent of
18th century political society with the new
founded implement "population" and their (political
population) association with raison d'état.
== See also ==
Biopolitics
Biopunk
Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France
Governmentality
