Biopouvoir
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the Western man learns little by little what is to be an alive species in an alive world, to have a body, conditions of existence, expectation of lifes, a health individual and collective, forces that one can modify… (Michel Foucault)
The to biopouvoir is a type of being able which is exerted on the life: life of the bodies and that of the population. According to Foucault, the exercise of this capacity constitutes a government of the men; before being exerted through the ministries for the State, it would have taken root in the government of the hearts exerted by the ministers of the Church.
The subjects of the capacity exerted by the pastors of the Church learned how to be regarded as ewes led by a shepherd. The shepherd exerted a power on a herd of ewe, which it had the role of saving, rather than on the population of body of the State-nation. But the operation in this manner of being able, properly governmental, will remain the same one, through the Church or the modern State: it is at the same time globalisant (the herd, population) and individualizing (the ewe, the body).
With the Reform, since is born the Reason of State and that several Christian sovereigns disconnect themselves radically from the Church (especially in Germany and England), to biopouvoir it will imbricate itself, always according to Foucault, with the exercise of the sovereign capacity.
In this political version, official, to biopouvoir it will deal with the life, either hearts, but of the men, with side the body (to discipline it) and on a side the population (to control it).
The element common to the body and the population, it is the Norme. The statistical standard. It is it which will make so that this to biopouvoir will be exerted, in a rational way, at the same time on a statistical unit (a community) and on a particular individu/un.
Biopolitique
See also: Biopolitique
To biopouvoir, in its political version, will be exerted initially via the taking into account of the human beings as alive species. Then via their medium of life, their medium of existence. Epidemics of plague, for example, were related to problems of marshes. A a whole public health was implemented.
The effects of the city on the birthrate, mortality, the old age of the population were analyzed. With industrialization the old age, the industrial accidents and the infirmities of war pose the problem of the individual which fall out of the field of capacity to work. Mechanisms of insurance and saving will aim at solving this problem. Will be create group insurance and savings banks, medical institutions, relief funds, insurance-health.
Industrialization and public medicine caused a true demographic explosion. Consequently, of the mechanisms aiming at regularizing the movement of the people developed. Statistical mechanisms.
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