Michele Foucault Biopower
Michel Foucault wrote a book called History of Sexuality. In Part five of the book Right of Death and Power over Life, he discusses about the historical “Sovereign Power” where one is allowed to decide who has the right to live and who has the right to die. The sovereign uses his power over life through the deaths that he can command and uses his authority to announce death by the lives he can spare. Foucault then moves on to Disciplinary Power where he came up with the “Panopticon” where one is to believe they were under surveillance at all times. Such surveillance is still used in our everyday life such as schools, prisons, offices, hospitals, and mental institutes. Later in his life, Foucault discovered Bio-power. This bio-power is a technology of power where the government has total control of the population and characteristics and sexuality of the human being. It allows the government to have power over of the ideal characteristics, epidemiology, economic statistics, productivity level and the population size. China’s one child policy will fall into place with the power of bio-power. This policy consisted of an act where it allowed each family to have only one child. Author, Maurizio Lazzarato publishes two articles after Foucault called, Biopolitics/Bioeconomics: a politic of multiplicity and From Biopower to Biopolitics where he discusses the works of Michel Foucault. In the Biopolitics/Bioeconomics: a politic of multiplicity he explains the economy and politics, liberalism as the government of heterogeneous dispositifs of power, populations/classes, discipline and security, and vitalpolitik. He specifies the genealogy of government and liberalism and recognizes the relation among economy and politics.
Sovereignty was the power where the sovereign had the right to decide life and death. This came from the ancient Roman law “Patria Potestas” where the father of a Roman family was given the option to choose whether or not his children and his
Sovereignty was the power where the sovereign had the right to decide life and death. This came from the ancient Roman law “Patria Potestas” where the father of a Roman family was given the option to choose whether or not his children and his