Biopower – The beginning!

Biopower

Michel Foucault

Biopower, positive power, is literally having power over other bodies.

Customary regulations, habits, health, reproductive practices, family, “blood”, and “well-being” would be straightforward examples of biopower.

Biopower thus names the way in which biopolitics is put to work in society, and involves what Foucault describes as ‘a very profound transformation of [the] mechanisms of power’ of the Western classic age.

A power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations.

We’ve transitioned from Sovereign Power to Biopower. Biopower, idea that the power comes from the people.

Knowledge is intrinsically connected to power.