Biopolitics and biopower PDF

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Governmentality: Michel Foucault and the Analytics of PowerWeek Two. Lecture One: Biopolitics and BiopowerLecture Part AFoucault’s life Foucault born in France in 1926  Held a series of positions at French universities in the 1960s  Professor at the College de France from 1969 till his death  Ac...

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Governmentality: Michel Foucault and the Analytics of Power Week Two. Lecture One: Biopolitics and Biopower

Lecture Part A Foucault’s life    

Foucault born in France in 1926 Held a series of positions at French universities in the 1960s Professor at the College de France from 1969 till his death Active campaigner for gay and lesbian liberation and prison reform and the death sentence which was still in place at the time

Foucault’s lectures at the College de France were mostly published after his death from notes and recoding ‘The Birth of Biopolitics’ is a lecture series that further develops the notion of biopolitics introduced in the previous lecture series ‘Security, Territory, Population’ Robert Esposito – biopolitics in primarily that which is not sovereign Often two terms biopolitics and biopower are used synonymously even by Foucault himself, but Esposito distinguishes between the two… Biopolitics is a politics in the name of life Biopower – a life subject to the command of politics In each case we are dealing with mutation of sovereignty from the power over life to the power over life itself Dictionary definition of sovereignty – supreme power or authority, the authority of a state to govern itself or another state, a self-governing state. Biopolitics is a political power exercised on whole population in every aspect of human life. Foucault shows how 18th century political economy marks the birth of a new governmental rationality

Foucault sees the emergence of the pastoral sovereign as entirely foreign to the Greco-Roman polity (Pastoral power is a productive power that produced subjects) It is imported unto European statecraft (the skilful management of state affairs) through Judaism and Christianity Pastoral power must constantly ensure, sustain and improve the lives of each and everyone

For this to happen the sovereign pastor must know a great deal about the lives of individual subjects and be able to conduct their everyday lives This conduct of conduct is what Foucault describes as ‘governmentality’ Governmentality is a combination of the terms government and rationality. Government in this sense refers to conduct or an activity meant to shape, guide or affect the conduct of people. Governmentality is the organised practices through which subjects are governed be that mentalities, rationalities or techniques. Governmentality is formed by institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this specific but complex power that has the population as its target.

In the middle ages the state was limited to the administration of justice. The courts on behalf of the sovereign acted as arbiter between private disputes and the church through canon law (set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority (church leadership)) operated a parallel system. By 15th and 16th century the administrative state was beginning to move into other regulatory areas – currency, transport, general taxation etc. The state becoming governmentalized. Governmentality should be seen as a process not a static structure and systems of power as processes. Foucault argues there is a tendency to reduce the state to a series of functions for example the development of the means of production and the reproduction of the means of production

Lecture Part 2 The state became governmentalized between the 1450-1750s (early modern period) Governmentalism = the extension of the sphere and degree of government activity 16th century was a key turning point for Foucault because of the dismantling of feudalism and shift towards territorial forms of administration and the emergence of colonial states and the reformation and the counter reformation. Reformation = a 16th century religious movement marked ultimately by rejection or modification of some Roman Catholic doctrine and practice and establishment of the Protestant churches. Counter reformation was the catholic revival after the reformation Machiavelli’s the Prince 1532 – study of sovereignty. An instruction guide for new princes and royals. The Prince accepts that the aims of princes for glory and survival justify the use of immoral means to achieve those ends. The sovereign is seen as singular and external. Sovereignty is semi-supernatural, a godly gift bestowed upon a crown’s head. There is therefore not a legitimate way a rival could overthrow that power unless they had a similar divine claim.

Foucault focuses on Machiavelli because Machiavelli is one of the first writers to focus on statecraft and governance

By the end of the 18th century Rousseau on political economy – thinks about the household as a microcosm of the society as a whole Foucault interested in how to scale up the government of the family with the general management of the state

Lecture Part 3 Quesnay – refers to good government as economic government. The originator of the term laissezfaire. Looked at the relationship between the different economic classes and sectors of society and the flow of payment between them De la Perriere – government is the right disposition of things – things being population with territory, wealthy, climate, flood, famine. La Perriere also looks at personal qualities a sovereign need like humility and patience

Pater familialist – sovereign as father of the nation and the subjects as the children Governmentality begins to emerge very strongly in the 18th century. Has its development in the knowledge of the state, statistics or the science of the state

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The religious wars and conflicts throughout the 15th, 16th and 17th century in Europe were beginning to end Energy for conflict and territory was directed towards colonialism Relative time of peace allowed for new forms of government Foucault gives the example of mercantilism (Mercantilism is an economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy. It promotes imperialism, colonialism, tariffs and subsidies on traded goods to achieve that goal) First time knowledge of the state is formed and employed for tactic of the government Mercantilism’s objective is about making individual sovereigns stronger doesn’t support society as a whole By 17th century -jurists and philosophers are recognising the idea of the social contract as a way of ensuring good government The Social Contract by Rousseau – the ability to coerce is not a legitimate power. In this desired social contract, everyone will be free because they all forfeit the same number of rights and impose the same duties on all. Rousseau argues that it is absurd for a man to surrender his freedom for slavery; thus, the participants must have a right to choose the laws under which they live. Foucault saw that the trick was to marry the big abstract overarching framework of the sovereign with the micro governmentality of the household and the family Birth of population – emergence of the idea of populations

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The science of statistics allows for the specific phenomenon of population to be quantified Family goes from being a model/ metaphor for how government should be organised to being an instrument to increase the wealth of nations e.g. French pro-birth campaigns, one child family policies Understanding of the dynamics of the family can be used for state objectives Population becomes an expression of a governmentalized state Sovereignty is not eliminated by the emergence of the new art of government Discipline is central to the management of populations A way to analyse modern power relations Discipline, population and governmental management holds up state sovereignty Power over life More nuanced form of power strategies which are to do with the management of life itself, of multiple bodies.

Seminar Question: What did Foucault understand by the terms ‘biopolitics’ and ‘biopower’ and how does he trace their emergence in modern Europe? How have these concepts been used to explain new technologies of regulation and control of the body as subject and bodies as ‘population’?

The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the college de France: Course Summary 

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Biopolitics – the attempt starting from the 18th century to rationalize the problems posed to governmental practice by phenomena characteristic of a set of living beings forming a population: health, hygiene, birth-rate, life expectancy, race… Needs to be thought of in relation of liberalism Aims to understand liberalism as a practice/ a way of doing things directed toward objectives and regulating itself by continuous reflection Rationalisation? The exercise of government aims to maximise its effects whilst reducing its costs as much as possible – in the political as well as economic sense of cost Remember government being used as the verb not the noun The idea of liberalism is that there is too much government, or that we should always be suspicious of there being too much government The question behind the suspicion that there is always a risk of governing too much is – why after all, is it necessary to govern at all? Liberalism tries to ascertain why government is necessary, in what ways it can be dispensed with and in what areas its interventions is pointless or harmful Liberalism does not start with the state but with society. Development of a technology of government based on the principle that it is already excessive Liberalism is a criticism of a previous governmentality that we are trying to break free from or a current governmentality that one wants to scale down The question of liberalism is the question of too much government

Rose, Nikolas S., author & Rose, Nikolas S, 2007. Politics of life itself: biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapter 1 ‘Biopolitics in the Twenty-First Century’

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‘Medical jurisdiction extended beyond accidents, illness and disease to the management of chronic illness and death, the administration of reproduction, the assessment and government of risk and the maintenance and optimization of the healthy body. The medicalisation of social problems Medics intruding into moral and political matters Social movements from feminism to disability rights advocates challenge the paternalistic power that doctors exercised over their patients and their lives Aims to empower patients. Patients as consumers – growing availability of medical information on the internet from multiple sources Medicine now looks at bodies on the molecular rather than the molar level Ludwik Fleck’s ‘style of thought’ = a particular way of thinking, seeing and practicing.

Systems biology

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A technology is more than equipment of a technique. It is an assemblage of social and human relations within which equipment and techniques are only one element. ‘technology here refers to any assembly structure by a practical rationality governed by a more or less conscious goal… hybrid assemblages of knowledge, instruments, persons, systems of judgment, buildings and spaces, underpinned at the programmatic level by certain presuppositions ad assumptions about human beings - Rose (1996) Hence why many have argued that new reproductive technologies entail much more than the skills of doctors using instruments or techniques They engender certain ways of thinking about reproduction These technologies aim towards the goal of optimization Not merely medical technologies or technologies of health but technologies of life ‘biotechnology changes what it is to be human’ biotechnology changes what it is to be biological’ - Hannah Landecker

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Focus on ‘susceptibility’ identifying and treating persons in the present based on ills they are predicted to suffer in the future Susceptibility is an extension of the modes of thought of predisposition and risk. A predisposition since at least the 18th century, was an inherited taint or flaw that would in the right circumstance would manifest as an illness Risk assessment, risk prediction and risk management. Technologies of life aim to identify invisible pathologies but then also intervene on them to optimize the life chances of the individual Premonitory knowledge – the knowledge deployed by genetic counsellors Margaret Lock 2005 Women taking responsibility for their own medical futures and those of their families and children Rayna Rapp – ethical pioneers Somatic experts Bioethics Broadly speaking, sociology has been highly critical if not suspicious of developments in biomedicine Biology is being opened up to more choice. Biology is no longer destiny. A biomedical technique has extended choice to the very fabric of vital existence, we are faced with the inescapable task of deliberation abut the work of different human lives - with controversies over such decisions, with conflict over who should make such decision and who cannot.

Clarke et al (2003) Biomedicalization: techno-scientific transformation of health, illness and US biomedicine Fleck (1979) Genesis and Development of a scientific fact Franklin (1997) Embodied progress: a cultural account of assisted conception Franklin (2003) Ethical bio capital In Franklin and Lock remaking Life and Death. Landecker – Living differently in time: plasticity, temporality and cellular biotechnologies Lock (2005) The eclipse of the gene and the return of divination Rose (1996) Inventing ourselves: psychology power and personhood Strathern (1992) Reproducing the future: essays on anthropology, kinships and new reproductive technologies

Michel Foucault Wikipedia page quote on biopower

Biopower studies populations regarding (for example) number of births, life expectancy, public health, housing, migration, crime, which social groups are over-represented in deviations from the norm (regarding health, crime, etc.) and tries to adjust, control or eliminate these norm deviations. One example is the age distribution in a population. Biopower is interested in age distribution to compensate for future (or current) lacks of labour power, retirement homes, etc. Yet another example is sex: because sex is connected to population growth, sex and sexuality have been of great interest to biopower. On a disciplinary level, people who engaged in non-reproductive sexual acts have been treated for psychiatric diagnoses such as "perversion", "frigidity" and "sexual dysfunction". On a biopower-level, the usage of contraceptives has been studied, some social groups have (by various means) been encouraged to have children, while others (such as poor, sick, unmarried women, criminals or people with disability) have been discouraged or prevented from having children.

Foucault, M. et al., 1991. The Foucault effect: studies in governmentality: with two lectures by and an interview with Michel Foucault, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 9 – ‘How should we do the history of statistics’ by Ian Hacking

Statistics do not only provide information but are part of the technology of power in a modern state One name for statistics especially in France, has been ‘moral science’ – the science of deviancy, of criminal, court convictions, suicides, prostitutions, divorce. Many of the modern categories by which we think about people and their activities were put in place by an attempt to collect numerable data. Thanks to medical statistics a list of causes of death was made during the 19th century. In most parts of the world, it is illegal to die of anything not on the official list – although the list of causes is regularly updated. It is illegal for example to die from old age. Foucault sees a new kind of power emerging in the 19th century. A preoccupation with bodies. The disciplines of the body that he describes in his work on the prison ad on sexuality form an entire micro-power concerned with eh body and match up with comprehensive measures statistical assessment and interventions which are aimed at the social body.

https://educationmuseum.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/michel-foucault-modalities-of-power/

“In common use, the term power is a very broad concept that encompasses many different things including ability, agency, domination, and potential. Foucault’s analysis breaks the concept of power

apart, and his theory explains differences in various modes of power. He argued that over centuries, societies have changed from feudalism, to monarchies, to democracies; but our political theories of power have not kept up with those changes. Since we no longer live in monarchies, Foucault argued, we need a more finely tuned theory of power that can help us understand the many different ways power operates when there are no dictators. Foucault was very interested in the history of governments, and he paid a great deal of attention to the meaning of democracy. When he analyzed the effects of democratic revolutions, his analysis of those historical power shifts was not naive. He did not suppose that in a democracy there would be total freedom or that democracy would mean equal power for all people. He did not assume that the end of sovereign power meant the end of power. Quite the contrary. He was interested in analyzing how power operates within a democratic system in which people are supposed to govern themselves. Foucault argued that democracies have many kinds of power – modalities of power. Democracies have laws, police, judges, and prisons, so there are elements of sovereign power still at work. At the same time, however, in democracies people are supposed to govern themselves, so that is a different mode of power from the sovereign mode. We tell ourselves how to behave. Furthermore, democratic governments do not gain legitimacy through threats of terror, so we need a careful theorization of power in order to perceive how this new ‘kinder and gentler’ mode of power works. As modes of power in democracies, Foucault explicitly identified:

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Sovereign power

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Disciplinary power

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Pastoral power

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Bio-power

As the name suggests, sovereign power refers to the mode of power most obvious in a monarchy, where the king or queen possesses ultimate authority over other people’s lives. Foucault used the term ‘sovereign’ to refer to this noble mode of power. The sovereign mode of power operates in democracies when authorities (people or laws) try to control other people. For example, the mode of sovereign power describes the situation in which headmasters use their authority to expel or promote students, when bullies persecute their victims, and when some people have the right to vote while others are denied. The sovereign mode of power is easy to recognize and understand because it most closely resembles forces of domination and control with which we are familiar.

In democratic societies, people are subjected to laws and coercive practices (sovereign power), but that is not the only kind of power in democracies. In democracies, we also control ourselves. Disciplinary power is the kind of power we exercise over ourselves based on our knowledge of how to fit into society. We discipline ourselves on the basis of messages we get from society – knowledge, rewards, and images – of how we are supposed to live. We try to be normal by disciplining ourselves even in the absence of threats of punishment.

Foucault’s analysis tells us that disciplinary power is executed through mechanisms that are different from the mechanisms of sovereign power. For example, sovereign power is exercised through physical punishment and rewards. Disciplinary power, on the other hand, is exercised through surveillance and knowledge. One surveillance mechanism is the gaze. The gaze is symbolized by the panopticon, a prison design that allows a supervisor to watch inmates. The concept of the gaze is ...