Biopower

Foucault and Biopower

Foucault introduced the notion of biopower, and a related term, bio-politics, in the first volume of The History of Sexuality. Here, the concept biopower builds on his earlier reconceptualization of power as omnipresent capillaries and as productive. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault contrasts the productive nature of the power of discipline with the restrictive nature of sovereign power. Foucault later explains that the disciplinary power that emerged in the 17th century operates on the body, reflecting an “anatomo-politics,” whereas biopower emerged in the following century and involves the regulation of the population, or species body.

At the beginning of his lecture series, Security, Territory, Population, Foucault describes biopower as those mechanisms through which human biological features became the target of political strategies. Foucault examines the emergence of this governmental interest in the population through liberalism, the technologies of statistics, and the social sciences, such as political economy, demography and sociology. Although the emphasis of biopower is on [Page 73]enhancing the productive aspects of the population, and contrasts with the sovereign power's right to take, biopower also involves the capacity to take, or withhold, life.

Other Authors

In Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben has used Foucault's notion of biopower as part of his argument that sovereign power is not eclipsed by biopower. Rather, Agamben argues that sovereign power and biopower come together in the formation of “The Camp,” a zone in which the state of exception is permanent, and “in which power confronts nothing but pure life.” In Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri use the concept of biopower in their neo-Marxist account of contemporary globalized power, denoted as “Empire.” They argue that bio-political production has become the centerpiece of contemporary power. Indeed, “Empire presents the paradigmatic form of biopower.” More recently, Nikolas Rose examined the role of biopower in the operation of contemporary biotechnologies. He argues that emerging biotechnologies link biopower increasing to the liberal formation of selves, with their associated questions of ethics, risk, and responsibility.