Foucault explicates the concept of human sexuality as a linking point between two developments of modern power which effectively allowed power/knowledge to micro- manage human life: the political role of human sexuality in the control of individual
bodies, and its significance for the control of populations (Foucault, 2008: 145). While disciplinary power and its concern with the individual is the first dimension of the
development of modern power, biopower is the term Foucault gives to the later expansion of power that arose in response to the problems of the individual as a member of a
biological population.
Foucault theorizes disciplinary power and biopower as two “poles” around which modern power came to control, regulate and manage life (Foucault, 1991a: 262).
Biopower concerns itself with human life at the level of population, monitoring and intervening in the conditions that support the shared biological aspects of human beings as members of a populace (Foucault, 2008: 139). Disciplinary power’s constitution of a disciplined individual renders subjects amenable to the practices of biopower which measure, manage and optimize the biological characteristics of human beings via their membership in the population (Foucault, 2008: 141).
According to Foucault, modern power involved two “seizures” of power over the body, where discipline produced controllable, punishable, and observable bodies, before power addressed the body in its membership of the population, where it could be
managed, controlled and regulated at the level of its biological characteristics (Foucault, 2003b: 242-243). The many dimensions of human existence thus became objects of enquiry under the umbrella of a bio-politics that was concerned with all domains of human life (Foucault, 2003b: 244-245). Foucault states:
Biopolitics deals with the population, with the population as a political problem, as a problem that is at once scientific and political, as a biological problem and as power’s problem. (Foucault, 2003b: 245)
In other words, biopower has politicized the processes of life and death, through adopting a bio-political response to human life that monitors and regulates characteristics of the population via measurement, scientific and educational discourse, and institutional intervention. An example of a biopolitical problem is one of smoking related diseases. The probability of cancer, emphysema, heart disease and other smoking related
pathologies have been measured and there has been a concerted effort through education and through direct intervention to address the threat to the health of the population. There has been legislation concerning where smoking is permitted (banned from hotels,
restaurants and some public spaces), who can purchase tobacco (over 18 years of age and a further push in Tasmania to ban the purchase of cigarettes by future generations born after a particular date) and how cigarettes are to be specifically packaged (health warnings and plain packaging).
The techniques associated with biopower allowed medical and scientific knowledge to prevent or delay death and maximize the potential of human life, intervening at the level of our shared biological characteristics (Foucault, 1991a: 264- 265). While traditionally life was at the mercy of the arbitrary nature of death, the
emergence of modern power linked knowledge and power to life and its processes, providing biological life with a political foundation (Foucault, 1991a: 264-265). Death can be delayed through advances in medical knowledge and politicized through
discourse, as Foucault states:
What we are dealing with in this new technology of power is not exactly society (or at least not the social body, as defined by the jurists), nor is it the individual-as-body. It is a new body, a multiple body, a body with so many heads, that while they may not be infinite in number, cannot necessarily be counted. (Foucault, 2003b: 245)
Biopower’s interventions colonize everyday life, as evidenced by forms of pejorative societal discourse that are concerned with reproductive practices, well
balanced diets, preventative medicine, safe sexual practices, drinking in moderation and exercise plans. These discourses and the practices that they embody are aimed at
regulating and prolonging life through promoting a particular idea of health and
emphasizing our responsibility to attain it. The biological health of individuals becomes a social and political concern, and the pressure to conform to the ideals of normality
For Foucault, power is subjectifying in two distinct ways; it makes individuals subject to themselves, relating them to their own identity in a specific way; and it makes individuals subject to others through domination (Foucault, 2003a: 130). Disciplinary power is focused on individual bodies ensuring their productivity and docility, while biopower manages and controls the issues that affect the population as a whole (Foucault, 2003b: 249). Homogeneity is the aim of biopower and this is achieved through
engendering a stability that aims to maintain the integrity of the whole, by focusing on “general biological processes” rather than individual bodies (Foucault, 2003b: 248-249).
Techniques of biopower supported power/knowledge as an agent of change within human life in the sense that the knowledge gained through the increased visibility of the details of human existence allowed power to effectively intervene to enhance and prolong life (Foucault, 2008: 142). The most significant effect of biopower upon human lived experience is that rather than being the subject of occasional and sporadic sovereign intervention, human life became the subject of constant regulation, correction and normalization within a multitude of distinct yet related domains (Foucault, 2008: 143- 144). This has important implications for understanding the possibilities open to us as individual subjects who are also members of a population subject to the power of normalization. The implications of the constitution of our subjectivities through the techniques of disciplinary/biopower will be taken up within my discussion in Chapter Three. An exploration of the importance of the relationship between power and freedom
for Foucault’s account of subjectivity will help shed light on the possibilities available for modern individuals to resist the techniques of modern power.