Biopolitique

Biopolitique is a Néologisme formed by Michel Foucault to identify a form of exercise of the to be able which carries, either on the Territoire S but on the life of people, on Population S, the Biopouvoir.

It was taken again and develop since by Giorgio Agamben.

Biopolitique and discipline

The integration of alive in the policy

The “biopolitique one” is born publicly with Rio de Janeiro in October 1974, at the time of a series of course on “the social medicine”. Some of these courses were published and are in the Dits and written :

  • Michel Foucault, “the incorporation of the hospital in modern technology”, p. 508-521, in Said and writings , T. 2, Paris, Gallimard, 2001.

Michel Foucault resorts to a model, the differential of treatment of the epidemic S of Lèpre and Peste, which will be taken again with the Collège de France (on January 15th 1975), and which is found in Surveiller and to punish (inaugurating the chapter “panoptism”), published with the beginning of the year 1975. With three recoveries in a few months, Foucault uses of the same figure, each time differently. A constant however: he sees there the illustration of the passage of a type of being able with another. Each time, it raises that this new type of being able takes into account and is exerted on the body and the life, unlike oldest which applied, according to the legal model, on the subjects.

In the attention with the life of the population such as it is highlighted in forty, Foucault sees the beginnings of what it will call the biopolitique one. It is about the progressive taking into account, by the capacity, of the life of the population. That does not want to say a human group simply many, but of the living beings crossed, ordered, governed by processes, biological laws . A population has a Birth rate, a Population pyramid, a morbidity, it can perish or quite to the contrary develop (Michel Foucault, “meshs of the capacity”, in Dits and writings , T. 2, Paris, Gallimard, 2001, p. 1012). It is an application to optimize the collective force. And thus one can read the device of forty: maximaliser life of the population. From this taking into account of the population, new types of problems will be posed like those of the habitat, of the living conditions in a city, public Hygiène, modification of the relationship between birthrate and mortality.

Foucault sometimes will stress the taking into account of the life, and will develop the genesis of biopolitic, sometimes will underline the individualizing monitoring, and will propose the emergence of the disciplinary power.

The biopolitique one would be for Michel Foucault, the joint action of the common power on the whole of the subjects, as living beings, on the life of the population, considered as a richness of the common power, in front of being the object of attention in order to make it grow and to increase vitality by it.

Leprosy and exclusion

With the the Middle Ages, the Lèpre is looked after by the exclusion of the leprous one. Regarded as a punishment of God, the disease inspires a true terror. During a ceremony, the separatio leprosorum , the leprous one declared died civilly and excluded from the community. In some Diocese S, it even assists, dissimulated, with the show of its own burial before joining the leper-house. This exclusion, geographical, civil, of the physical community ensures to him its inclusion, cultural and divine. “The sinner who gives up the leprous one with his door opens him safety” (Michel Foucault, Histoire of the madness at the traditional age , Paris, Gallimard, 1976, p. 16.).

The leprous one leaves to live the space which occupies the leper-house in the Géographie physical and social: with the doors of the city. At the edge of the cities, not inside but either exactly apart from social and human space. Just as its exclusion of the human order opens with leprous soteriologic inclusion , the leper-house insists, in its marginal visibility, to permanently point out this separation and this curse of God, the power of the divine one.

The Topographie which puts in report/ratio Dialectique the city and the leper-house repeats the topology of the relation of leprous and the community. That is to say a clear separation: community on a side and other, without contact, but in report/ratio, indistinct mass of those which were rejected by it: the leprous ones.

Separation, binary division sign the Souverain.

Plague and monitoring

When the plague was declared in a city, series of measure were given that it was necessary to follow, “under penalty of the life” (Michel Foucault, Surveiller and to punish , Paris, Gallimard, 1975, p. 197.) who aimed at putting the population under narrowest possible monitoring. The city and its neighborhoods were closed (in its reading, Foucault so much will not insist on this point), with prohibition to leave there. The territory quarantined was divided in districts, the districts were divided in districts, then in these districts one isolated the streets, and there was in each street of the supervisors, in each district of the inspectors, each district persons in charge of district and in the city itself either a governor named for this purpose, or still the aldermen who had received, at the time of the plague, a supplement of being able (Michel Foucault, abnormal the , Paris, Seuil/Gallimard, 1999, p. 42).

The nomadic animals were killed. Each inhabitant was to be made count. Once the census and the division of the territory completed, each one was to be locked up at home, all the keys were gathered. Nobody any more had the right to leave and circulate in the city. A device was planned for the food (made reserves, system of provisioning by baskets and pulleys for the perishable goods).

Immobilized city. In this isolated territory, to this population paralyzed in forty, one applied surveillance measures squared.

“Nobody any more could circulate, except for the inspectors, of the soldiers, the intendants and the “corbels”: poor wretches having to carry the patients, to bury deaths, to clean the infected places, etc whose death did not count. ”

Daily, the inspectors passed in front of each house of which they had the load and each inhabitant was to present himself to a window (if possible, a specific window for each one). The present were noted. If somebody did not present himself to the window, it that it was sick, or died. The inspectors had also as a task to supervise that nobody left and to note all the events, all the complaints, all the remarks. Each day, they transmitted to the chief of district the whole of noted information.

Permanent checking of the vitality of each one in the fixed community. Emergence of the relation capacity/to know.

The population is collected by the political power which seeks to supervise some and to control health of it. One notes deaths, the patients, the events of any kind. The city is immobilized and the population subjected to a continuous recording of its state. Each one is supervised, controlled, permanently. The finality of this situation, it is to maintain the population with its maximum of life. In same time, which is different, social space, on the finest level of the individuals, is controlled permanently.

“Meshs of the capacity”

In 1976, with Salvador de Bahia, Michel Foucault carries out a second analysis of the real operation of the capacity using the categories of biopolitic and discipline (or anatomo-policy) which it had begun two years earlier in Rio de Janeiro.

Taking into consideration interest of the Capitalism, the old “system of being able” sovereign presented two great defects.

  • “… the political power, such as he was exerted in the social body, was a very discontinuous capacity”, too many things actually escaped to him (the majority from the things: activities of Smuggling, Offense S, etc): the meshs were too large. From where a first concern: to reduce the size of those. How “… to pass from a capacity lacunar, total, with a continuous capacity, atomic and individualizing: what each one, which each individual in itself, in his body, his gestures, can be controlled, in the place of total controls and of mass”?

  • “the second great disadvantage of the mechanisms of being able, such as they functioned in the Monarchie, is that they were excessively expensive. ” The capacity “… was primarily to be able of taking away”: primarily perceiving and predatory. In this measurement, it always operated an economic subtraction and, consequently, far from supporting and to stimulate economic flow, it was perpetually its obstacle and its brake. From where this second concern: “to find a mechanism of being able such as, at the same time as it controls the things and the people until the least detail, it is not expensive nor primarily predator for the company, than it is exerted in the direction of the economic process itself” (Michel Foucault, “meshs of the capacity”, COp cit., p. 1001-1020).

It is with these two concerns that will start to answer the disciplinary and biopolitic devices. The device of forty can be included/understood like one of the first attempts at control fine at the individual level. The disadvantage being its strong cost and the stop of any economic activity, paralysis of the city. How then to reconcile this device, perfect from the point of view of the individualized monitoring, with the economic activity? The answer will be found in the installation of the disciplinary institutions which, by operating kinds of partial forty but of long life, will distribute, distribute the inspecting devices, allowing the continuation and even the improvement of the economic activity. The various disciplinary institutions are connected by networks of Communication. Network of hard systems of control.

The direction which the capacity takes, which corresponds in the passing of a monarchical capacity to a capacity middle-class, is: to control most finely possible, most economically possible, more quickly also, in order to support economic development.

The disciplinary companies would have reached their apogee at the beginning of the 20th century and another type of company would be succeeding to them, that Gilles Deleuze, while affirming to follow Michel Foucault, names towards the end of its life the “Holding companies”.

See too

External bonds

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