William Walters on Foucault's Bio-Power - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

William Walters on Foucault's Bio-Power

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vx90PLATgkSlide2

Biopower:

T

he

operations of power that secure and defend the nation-state

as it circulates

within civil society

F’s

biopower

refers

to

the

techniques of “subjugation of bodies and the control of

populations.”

18

th

C: Power was intertwined

into the development of capitalism

as the bodies of workers were inserted into the production machinery and population was applied to

economic

processes.

Segregation

and social

hierarchization

(class) ensured

“relations of domination and effects of hegemony

”

War of attrition or racial conflicts defend the

extablished

norms of the society, i.e., it being expressed as the

nation-

state.

‘

if I want to live, you must die’ into a biological formulation: ‘death of the bad race, of the inferior race (or the degenerate, or the

abnormal) Slide3

F’s Biopower: the

political logic used to manage and control populations through speculations about the future based on probabilities and statistics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVhE3Muh3co

first 3 min only (2008

)

Governmentality

is used for the security of the society, i.e., the state’s complex conduits of power as expressed in its institutions

, procedures,

tactics and calculations are used/ applied on its

target population, as its principal form of

knowledge,

and as its essential

apparatuses

of security

.

This security

system

is

the main

apparatus of

biopower

that are expressed as the

state’s

policies

and

practices.

These policies and their implementation should result in the economic

maximization of resources

while maintaining scarcity and acceptable levels of poverty.Slide4

‘Truth’

(as expressed by power)

is

produced by institutions and by scientific discourses formulated in relation to these institutions

The state’s (or any organized) dominant economic

and political

structures control the production and transmission of

what should be accepted as ‘the truth’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

j0hQeykz5ZY

truth a

soc

construct? An argument 6 min

Society

assumes that

it is

the truth

when it becomes ‘hardened

into an unalterable form in the long baking process of history

’

Foucault

utilizes genealogy to figure out the various practices applied on the body and the dominating powers that produce such practices

.Slide5

Right to take life or let live

is

Juridical

power: King’s Power over death from the period of

E

nlightenment

Used by official institutions: e.g. govt.

Prohibits and punishes: Subtraction of freedom of the individual – gain of ones power and loss of another’s

Transgressions are punished

Individual as subject and as object of

power

Current State power:

September 2013 BREAKING NEWS FEMA 800 Detention Camps in USA - last days End Times News update

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

RxIoMWS2B0g

(first 3min)Slide6

F’s disciplinary and

biopolitical

power:

Power over Life

To make one follow the norm: quantify, measure, appraise and hierarchize

Power to take charge of life: does not separate the state from the citizens

The power effects distributions around the norm.(subtraction

vis

a

vis

normalization)

Law operates as the Normalizing instrument

F differentiates between life and norm

Power is productive and positive – investment and valorization of the body

Power administers, optimizes and multiplies and implements the norm

Individual bodies are micromanaged in producing them as normalized bodies

Body politic of the population is similarly normalized

Power is neither inhibiting nor permitting

Unofficial institutions regulate through normative power

e.g.: peer pressure, unwritten rules of social normsSlide7

Law cannot regulate the way unofficial opinion can over life: e.g.:

Body size; gender and other social organizational aspects

The aim of

biopower

is that the society must be stabilized and normalized

Opinion regulates such issues that affect others in the society through rewards or negative reinforcements

Power over life:

Means: production of power

Location: everywhere and micromanaged

Source: unofficial

Works through positive/ negative reinforcementsSlide8

Disciplinary power:

Normalizes the individual body

Centered on the body as the anatomic politics of the body

Optimizes and micromanages the body to make it efficient: e.g.,

Diet, beauty regimen, new language learning

Discipline is enforced through surveillance

Biopower

: manages and normalizes the body politic (population)

Collect data, categorize and classify, average or normalize to attain

even distribution around the bell curve (norm)

Manage instances that do not fit the bell curve, i.e., pull in the outliers: e.g.: child being measured by doctors (h/w); BMI; population

trend

of what is normal; monitor the bell curve to enforce the normal for security: the “

society must be defended

”

Discipline is literal

Biopower

is metaphoricalSlide9

Right to death: subtraction of one’s power

Right to life: production of power

In juridical power liberation is fight against subtraction and if power prohibits, resistance is disobedience.

In

biopower

, resistance and oppositional activities augment the resisters’ power

e.g. sexual revolution of the 60s

When we think we are resisting, we are increasing our access to power – this complements power – can’t get rid of power

How then can you resist power?

Micro-subvert it and not being governed by the system, by playing the system

The care (and practice) of the self Slide10

Judith Butler:

Resist normative power

Gender Trouble:

normalization is repeated performance – normative is repetition of the norm

Resist hierarchal

binarism

e.g.: drag queens- better women (high normative feminism) compared to women

Subversion by changing a little each time you represent through disruption

Repetitions

often fail to perfectly conform to the norms that inspire/require them.

How

many of us fail to perform ideal (hetero, white, able-bodied, middle-class) masculinity or femininity? Even most hetero white able-bodied middle-class women fail to perform ideal femininity

In

the potential for (intentionally or unintentionally) imperfect repetitions, that disciplinary power produces its own resistances

.Slide11

Truth

is

produced by institutions and by scientific discourses formulated in relation to these institutions

The state’s (or any organized) dominant economic

and political

structures control the production and transmission of the truth

We assume it is truth when it becomes ‘hardened

into an unalterable form in the long baking process of history

’

F’s

Genealogy

’s role:

to

connect different events according to ‘the emergence of different

interpretations

’

to

explain these different interpretations as a ‘perspective’ rather than a universal or transcendental

truth.

Foucault utilizes genealogy to figure out the various practices applied on the body and the dominating powers that produce such practices

.Slide12

Reading The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (Vol. 1)

Duration: 6:54

Published: 2010-11-13

Uploaded: 2012-09-28

Author: Michael

McDonell

http://wn.com/

Reading_The_History_of_Sexuality_An_Introduction_Vol_1

Rather than thinking of sexuality as a biological given that can either be freed or repressed by external forces, Foucault looks at the way that the truth of sexuality is produced by certain institutions and discourses. He argues that we are saturated with images of sexuality, not because we are more free, but because it is a new way for power to be organized -

biopolitics

.Slide13

Michel Foucault - The Culture of the Self, First Lecture, Part 5 of 7

Duration: 10:46

Published: 2010-07-13

Uploaded: 2012-07-31

Author:

apolloxias

http://wn.com/Michel_Foucault__The_Culture_of_the_Self,_First_Lecture,

_Part_5_of_7

This is the first of a series of three lectures in which French philosopher Michel Foucault examines Western culture's conceptual development of individual subjectivity. He gave these lectures, in English, at UC Berkeley, beginning on April 12, 1983, roughly a year before he died. There are some

negligable

distortions in the tape.

plato.stanford.edu