Biopolitics or the government of life is a concept created by Michel Foucault, it is about the deployment of technologies, practices, fundamentals and strategies to introduce the logic of power into people’s daily lives.
For Foucault, biopolitics was born because, for power, it was not enough to introduce class division, private property and the exploitation of so-called human resources. In addition, exploited people needed to accept these rules of the game and apply them voluntarily.
- Biopolitics is a factor that is installed in people’s consciousness and leads them to accept power effectively.
- Passively and even happy to do so.
- For this there are a number of practices that are exercised on the individual.
- Even before his birth.
- And that take him subtly to integrate certain values and logics into life.
& Quot; Psychiatrization & quot; of everyday life, if examined closely, perhaps it would reveal the invisibility of power? ? Michel Foucault?
Biopolitics is implemented through a series of energy technologies that seek to establish control over people, some of the tools it uses, in the case of capitalism, are statistics, psychology, sociology, etc.
Since the person was born, and even before that happens, he or she is part of a control registry implemented from power, does not even breathe yet and must already be registered with an institution that is in charge of registering it and giving it a number .
You were also born in a medical institution that determines what it is?Normal? And what isn’t. The medical institution examines, applies a series of procedures to the baby and classifies it according to logic, this will continue forever.
It has not always been this way. In another time, all these events were in the sphere of privacy, today all this ritual presupposes the possibility of entering the field of power and receiving the rights or benefits derived from it, although in many places these benefits or rights do not exist. . or materialize.
For life, it still is. Important events, such as reaching a certain age, getting married, divorcing, etc. , continue to be recorded in a public instrument.
Basically, it allows people to monitor their lives. They must comply with the rules set by law, which will be required by the company to access the school, issue documents, etc. , however, in essence, individually, the recordings are fundamentally useless.
The vehicle by which biopolitics is effective are the norms, in this sense Foucault differentiates between the norm and the law: the law governs social life, while the norm deals with individual life.
Standards not only determine the form of social behavior that concerns respect for the space or rights of others, and there are rules for feeling, dancing, even kissing or having sex. There are a number of codes that say what’s right. and what’s wrong in each of these areas.
The weapon of power, says Foucault, is the use of technology. They lead us to try, by all means, to fit these standards, without asking ourselves whether this is fair or not. In addition, there is a promise that everyone will be happy if they can follow these rules.
The good thing about biopolitics is that power gets everything it wants in a very subtle way. The state does not directly tell how to make love; uses the ministry’s advertising or propaganda brochures. So, do we have the dichotomies? Or “normal/abnormal. To do this there are also parents and schools, who must follow very clear dictates. They act at all times on behaviors, thoughts, affections, etc.
What arises from all this, from the point of view of biopolitics, is a subject who feels free, even if he is not; in fact, power itself creates mechanisms for managing rebellion. There are football championships, video games or high, risky activities to give you a margin of transgression.
For Foucault, critical thinking is the only form of resistance to this overwhelming power. The question of why and the design of new ways of doing, feeling, thinking, etc. , are ways to limit or reduce the action of biopolitics.