Foucault | Bio-power

[atreestump]

I am going to attempt to quickly summarise Michel Foucault's 'bio-power'.

Sovereign power had the right to decide life and death. The father of the Roman family had the right to 'dispose' of the life of his children and slaves. Wars would break out if the Sovereign's very existence was in jeopardy, if he was to be overthrown etc. So the sovereign's right to life was exercise through his right to kill, which was formulated as the 'power of life and death' and was a means of deduction.

Bio-power, or the form of power that emerged with the rise of capitalism is a means of production - instead of 'take life and let live', a representational element was introduced - 'foster life or disallow it to the point of death'. In order to guarantee and individuals continued existence, the whole population must be exposed to death, the large scale outcomes of capitalism (longer life, improved health etc) has transformed the nature of power of the social body.

Capital punishment declined, or vanished in some countries, but deaths due to wars rose dramatically - wars are a means of production, they 'open' markets. So power is exercised and situated at the level of life, the species, the race.

The limit of power is death. Suicide, once a crime, as it is a way to usurp the power of death which the sovereign alone had the right to exercise, is a common resistance to the political administration of life as its self assigned task.

Foucault sees two poles of from of power over life (Bio-power) - centers on the body as a machine and the other focuses on the species body. The bodies were 'disciplined and docile' and the regulations of the population were the way power over life was deployed. Power over death was supplanted by the administration of bodies and the calculated management of life.

So Foucault presents to us a changing social body with power as a force responding to the multiplication of the population and the institutional bodies of discipline and punishment.

[kFoyauextlH]

Awesome, wonderful article!

[atreestump]

I like how he shows a mutation of power from a means of deduction to production, it's incredibly contradictory, yet it's the default reasoning people have in terms of war, some have to die so that others may live. I suppose Foucault is undermining the Humanist approach to politics and economics that we choose our options in war rationally, but power and drives are irrational.

[kFoyauextlH]

Yes, its extremely cool!