Biopower
Foucault discusses how
modern western societies have shifted their focus toward the biological aspects
of human beings as a means of control. This shift emerged in the 18th century.
Previously, the right to take life was based on sovereign authority. However,
this concept has been redefined: now, it’s about the right of the social body
to safeguard, maintain, or enhance life. The 18th century however witnessed
Holocausts and other forms of violence at scale that the regimes of the past
never saw. This “formidable power of death” now presents itself as a
counterpart of power that exerts positive influence on life, administering it,
optimizing it, multiplying it by subjecting it through regulations and
meticulous controls.
Regimes
(governments/ruling bodies) assume the role of managers of life and wage wars
in the name of its subjects, for their safety and security, and not
fundamentally to defend the sovereign. The loss of a particular life through
war has become a corollary of an attempt to protect another life. Hence, strategies to initiate war and to
terminate it are informed by the essential question of survival. The current
state of affairs, where the power to cause mass death (e.g., through nuclear weapons)
exists alongside the power to ensure individual survival. The principle
underlying battle tactics—that one must be capable of killing to go on
living—now defines state strategy.
The existence at stake is
no longer merely the juridical existence of sovereignty (legal authority). Instead,
it’s the biological existence of entire populations—their survival as a species
and race. Genocides in modern societies exist not due to a revival of ancient
rights to kill but because power is situated and exercised at the level of
life, the species, the race,
a.
Disciplining: training, conditioning and
shaping behaviors
b.
Optimizing: maximizing bodily potential
c.
Extortion of force: capable of extracting
work from the body
d.
Docility: making bodies compliant
e.
Integration: assembling the body into the
system
Implications:
The body is looked at as a functional and productive
entity that is aligned with the systems of control. Consequently, becomes a
resource to be managed and harnessed by the procedures of power that
characterized the disciplines: an anatomo-politics of the human body.
Operational Spaces : universities,
secondary schools, barracks, workshops
2nd pole/domain:
concentrated on the species body (human species as a collective unit)
The body imbued with the
mechanics of life and serving as the basis of the biological processes:
propagation, births and mortality, the level of health, life expectancy and
longevity, with all the conditions that can cause these to vary. Their
supervision was effected through an entire series of interventions and
regulatory controls: a bio-politics of the population.
Operational Spaces: political
practices, economic observation, of the problems of birth rate, longevity,
public health, housing, and migration.
The pole that regulates
the body and and the pole that regulates the populations around which the
organization of power over life was deployed.
This remarkable dual
technology emerged—one that intricately combined anatomical precision (body as
a sophisticated machine) with biological (body as an organism) insight. This
technology focused on individualizing and specifying bodily functions, paying
meticulous attention to the intricate processes of life. Its ultimate purpose
went beyond mere destruction; instead, it aimed to comprehensively invest in
life.
Institutions embodied as
operational spaces for these ideologies and deployed various techniques to
achieve subjugation of the bodies, the control of populations, marking the
beginning of an era of "bio-power.
Ideology, both an
apprenticeship doctrine and a contract-based approach to shaping society,
played a crucial role in constructing a general theory of power. However,
rather than remaining purely theoretical, these ideas materialized as practical
arrangements. In the 19th century, one significant aspect of this ‘technology
of power’ was the deliberate management of sexuality.
This bio-power was,
without question, an indispensable element in the development of capitalism;
the latter would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of
bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of the phenomena of
population to economic processes. (Foucault reader pg 263)
The state using its institutions of power as instruments to maintain the production relations, both anatomo - bio political poles became the techniques of power present at every segment of social body/society, perpetuated through diverse institutions such as family, the army, schools, police, medical dispensaries.
In the eighteenth century
a phenomenon emerged with capitalism. Foucault suggests that this phenomenon
had a wider impact than capitalism: the entry of life into history. He goes on
to explain how life became part of the order of knowledge and power,
influencing political techniques.
“By biopower I mean a
number of phenomena that seem to me to be quite significant, namely, the set of
mechanisms through which basic biological features of the human species became
the object of a political strategy, of a genealogy of power, or, in other
words, how, starting from the eighteenth century, modern Western societies took
on board the fundamental biological fact that human beings are a species”
From Security,
Territory, Population
For millennia, biological
forces—such as epidemics and famine—exerted immense pressure on historical
events. These dramatic forms of interaction were always overshadowed by the
threat of death. However, in the 18th century, with the dramatic
increase of agricultural productivity allowed for relief. death was ceasing to
torment life so directly. a relative control over life averted some of the
imminent risks of death.
The risk of death from
natural calamities averted, methods of power assumed responsibility for life
processes. They organize, regulate and modify life processes often with an aim
to maintain social order, productivity and stability.
Foucault says, western
man was learning what it meant to be living in this world, to have a body and
conditions for existence. The biological existence became synonymous with
political existence. The act of living became a part the knowledge field of
control and power’s domain of intervention.
In the past the concern of power was primarily the
legal subjects, where the ultimate authority was the power to impose death.
However, a shift occurred: power began to engage directly with living beings.
Its mastery extended beyond mere threats of death—it now operated at the level
of life itself. It was the taking charge of life, rather than the threat of
death that gave power its access even to the body.
bio power is what brought life and its mechanisms into
the realm of explicit calculations and made knowledge-power an agent of
transformation of human life.
According to Aristotle, humans are living animals, but
they possess an additional capacity for political engagement. Their political
existence extends from their biological nature. However, according to Foucault,
society has reached a critical juncture—the ‘threshold of modernity.’ The fate
of the entire species now hangs in the balance, contingent upon the political
choices and strategies we make. Modern humans face a different reality—one
where politics directly impacts our existence as living beings.
Norm is a corollary of
the biopower that assumed its prominence at the expense of the judicial system
of law. Law cannot help but be armed, and its arm par excellence is death; to
those who transgress it, it replies, at least as a last resort, with that
absolute menace. The law becomes the sword. However, the biopower takes charge
of life and deploys continuous regulatory mechanism in the name of the norms (social, moral, religious). The law
according to Foucault does not fade but operates more and more as a norm.
A normalizing society is the historical
outcome of a technology of power centered on life.
(Related to my research) I
have observed Adivasi communities in the Nallamalla forest range (home to
Chenchus), the Surjagarh region of Gadchiroli district (specifically Gurupalli,
Parsalgundi, Todsa, Hemalkasa), and across the Indravati River in the Bijapur
region of Chhattisgarh (focusing on Madia Gond communities from Kutru,
Dharapal, Nungur, and Bedrie). Additionally, I have studied communities in the
Dhadgaon Taluka of the Satpura range, including Chondwada, Sabalapani Paada,
and Dhanaje Paada (home to the Pawra community).
In the context of Adivasi
communities, biopower manifests in various forms. For example, government
policies related to healthcare, education, and social welfare can directly
shape the lives of Adivasis. Access to healthcare services, educational opportunities,
and social safety nets can significantly impact the health, well-being, and
economic prospects of Adivasi communities. Additionally, government policies
related to land use, access to natural resources, and environmental protection
can have a profound impact on Adivasi livelihoods and cultural practices. By understanding
the ways in which biopower operates in Adivasi areas, we can gain a deeper
appreciation for the complex interplay of social, political, and economic
factors that shape their experiences.
Foucault wrote that the ambit of biopower which means “life and its mechanisms” were brought into the realm of calculations and made power-knowledge an agent to shape their lives.
It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.
- Michel Foucault, 1971
Disclaimer: This article is in the making.
References:
Foucault, Michel, and Paul Rabinow. 1984. The Foucault Reader. London: Penguin Books.
Foucault, M. (2007). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1977-1978. New York: Picador.
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