Biopower & Biopolitics
Biopower and Biopolitics
The French philosopher, social theorist and historian Michel Foucault, is concerned with how modern society is controlled, subjugated and regulated through “biopower”. Biopower is a complex social theory that examines the strategies and mechanisms by which society is organized and managed through an authoritative regime of power, knowledge, and systems of subjugation. Power is not only something that an elite few exercise over the rest of society. Power is rather decentralized, invisible and diffused through all layers of society so that our very sense of self, our relationships and actions are a product of its force.
Foucault famously juxtapositioned what we know to be “sovereign power” against the notion of biopolitics. Biopolitics, as he defined it, is understood as “a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them.”
Further Reading:
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Keeping Russia Closeted
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