Biopower is a normative force employed on populations. Its main concern is the controlling of abnormalities and accounting or eliminating of random cases in order to maintain a normal population. The term biopower is highly associated with the French philosopher Michael Foucault. Foucault believed the government introduced a technology known as biopower to manage populations in the 18th century. The foundations of biopower lie in disciplinary power. Where disciplinary power trains the action of bodies
In “The Biopower of Beauty: Humanitarian Imperialism and Global Feminism in an Age of Terror,” Mimi Thi Nguyen argues that beauty as a measure of moral character functions to regulate an individual. Nguyen explains that beauty promises to be redemptive and bring an individual from the outside in relation with the world(362). For example, the United States through nongoverenmental orgainizations (NGO’s), have promoted beauty to Afghanistan women because it is a way if liberating them from an uncivilized
least three decades race, gender and biopower have all been linked together. The three terms used, are frameworks installed by governments to manage the population by categorizing, regulating and controlling its subjects. Race, gender and biopower are intertwined to illuminate the treatment of the minority for centuries. The mistreatment, discrimination and suffering experienced by the minorities throughout history is evident in the texts provided. Biopower, a phrase created by a French scholar
What I’m interested in exploring with the series of work Apparatus of Sovereign Power as Mechanisms of Control, are the functions of biopower (a term devised by French philosopher Michel Foucault which applies to the concept of controlling populations and managing people1), the political mechanisms through which biopower operates, and the effects on identity and the physical self. In this small body of work, I have created four drawings in charcoal that make an attempt to mock scenarios in which
Butler does diverge from Foucault's ideas. The reason Butler revises Foucault is that his concept of biopower leaves no room for resistance to power. For Foucault, a shift in the 17th century from a top-down monarchial model of power which focused on the individual gave way to a political technology for controlling entire populations. This system of diverse techniques of control, called Biopower, is made up of every regulatory mechanism in our society. One regulatory mechanism that Foucault shows
In Hardt’s Affective Labor, they argue that biopower is the “power of creation of life”, and that the creation of affective communities through affective labor is in itself a “form-of-life” (Hardt, 1999). Under the goal of creating a new type of human, revolutionary movements are engagements of biopower, which in turn push back against forms of biopower from the ruling class. In discussing their participation in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955/1956
distancing such as stay home when you’re sick, frequently wash your hands, and to not shake hands with anyone, he is the biopower to benefit the population. It is preventing the spread of the disease from people to people. Or another instance when a vaccine is found, and the CDC announces that everyone should get vaccinated. These scenes in the movie portray the positive use of biopower, which is to ensure that the whole population is healthy and lively, like how Foucault said. The movie Contagion is
and relate how the themes in it are relevant not only to key theorists, but to current political issues as well. The post apocalyptic world presented in the film Snowpiercer serves as stage, wherein the ideas of neo-liberalism, slow violence, and biopower are practiced in their most basic forms, without traditional governmental intervention. Moreover, the conductor of the train’s implementation of these ideologies is essential in conveying the message that Snowpiercer serves as a valuable cautionary
certain way. In my opinion, because of the way social media exercises biopower through the controlling images of how the body is "supposed" to look, it is actually contributing to the way our future could end up becoming. I believe this idea can be portrayed through the film Gattaca, a dystopian society where being genetically engineered to have the perfect genes makes you superior to those who are not. Using the concept of biopower,
Germany. European modernity is the basis to inter-related ideas and developments that we build on top of today. Previously to European modernity, “Sex was a means of access both to the life of the body and the life of the species.” (Taylor, Ch3 “Biopower”), today talking about sexual acts is socially accepted within our community due to the struggles of Nationalism, Genocide, Disorientation, French Revolution and modernity understood as nothing else but a
The final chapter (The Right to Death and the Power Over Life) is particularly interesting and contemporary. He argues that even if biopower seeks to invest in life, wars had never been more murderous than today’s era. Wars were in the past conducted in the name of the sovereign, while contemporary wars are conducted in the name of race, and the elimination of the “Other”, to make society
What is bioenergy? Bioenergy is renewable energy created accessible from materials derived from biological sources. Biomass is any organic material that has hold on daylight within the form of chemical energy. As a fuel it could contains straw, wood, sugarcane, wood waste, manure, and plenty of alternative byproducts from a range of agricultural processes. In its narrow meaning, it's an equivalent word to biofuel that is fuel derived from biological sources. The broader sense of bioenergy consist
This critical response explores author Roxanne Doty’s article, Bare life: border-crossing deaths and spaces of moral alibi. Specifically, it focuses on the section, Biopower and bare life in the US - Mexico borderlands. Accordingly, this analysis considers key questions and concepts as they mutually relate to the materials we cover in our module for week six about citizenship, migration and human rights. To be sure, Doty provides compelling support in her examination of migrant border-crossing
The idea of the spectacle referred to in Leo Chavez’ “The Latino Threat” is discussed in correlation to concerns over the immigration of Latinos into the United States and the discourses they create. One spectacle in the Latino Threat Narrative are the controversial cases of organ transplants for immigrants, such as that of Jesica Satillan, the recipient of a “bungled transplant,” that became widespread through the large volume of media attention and public opinion they generated. These cases raised
will run out and we will need to find an alternative. All though biomass has some challenges, it is still an important renewable resource for America to transition to a clean energy future. If developed properly, biomass can produce large amounts of biopower.
Biopower is actually rather interesting. It is literally about having control over bodies. And no, it is not about necromancy he was not talking about bring any dead bodies to life. It is actually about controlling the bodies of people. Biopower was used to make people “[operate] in the sphere of economic processes, their development,” (Foucault, pg.263). Sciencia Sexualis
Pressured by the demands of a growing population and limited by resources in a volatile economy, the government of Tanzania has created a decentralized multi-tiered health system. The majority of the system’s health facilities (approx. 65%) are government-run; however faith-based and for-profit providers also supply instrumental care services (Borghi et al. 2012). The system assumes and facilitates disparities in individuals’ wealth and accessibility to care. It employs a hierarchy of health services
against race-mixing and was integral to the shaping of institutions such as segregation and apartheid, as well as the implementation of eugenics and sterilization programs within the early twentieth century. Bernasconi utilizes Foucault's concept of "biopower" to elucidate the roles which the sciences of genetics and heredity played in the development of state level and systematic racism. He describes how it highlights the origin of races not being of nature, but as the result of human breeding patterns
These have come to be referred to by the term biocolonialism. Further, the obvious connection to colonialism, biocolonialism is also linked to the concept of biopolitics, or biopower, developed by Foucault. • How we do we define subaltern studies in the wider field of post-colonial studies? Is it simply an Indian-national sector in this wider field or is it a cluster of distinct theoretical positions in this wider field?
Edward Bond’s ‘Lear’ offers an alternative perspective on a celebrated Shakespearean play as an interaction between the complex mechanisms of social forces and power relations in a highly politicized and contemporary version of “King Lear”. As a product of the post-Second World War era, Bond’s warfront experiences and his exposure to the monstrosity of state sponsored violence, played a pivotal role in the shaping of his political mind