Organic power

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The term bio-power (French: le biopouvoir ) goes back to Michel Foucault and describes power techniques (increasingly also called biopolitics ) that “aim not at the individual, but at the entire population” , whereby he understands the population as “a group, which does not consist just of many people, but for people affected by biological , dominated penetrated processes and laws and are directed [and] a birth , an age curve (...), a state of health. " has. The goal of bio-power at Foucault is to regulate this population, defined in this way, in particular by regulating their reproduction, the birth and death rate , the level of health , the housing conditions, and the like. a.

Giorgio Agamben , who wants to continue Foucault's analysis, understands bio-power as the rule of the sovereign over “bare life”. Life itself is at stake in power. While Foucault analyzes biopower as an everyday condition, Agamben chooses the view of the state of emergency.

Biopower with Michel Foucault

Development of the term

Foucault developed the term bio-power in his book Der Wille zum Wissen (1977) to describe a new type of power mechanism that developed in the 18th century: While power was previously derived from death, one is now developing : power whose central focus is life "You could say the old law [of the sovereign, dV] to die making or life to be , was replaced by a power life to make or to their death come ." - “Until then there were only subjects, only legal subjects (...). Now there are bodies and populations. "

One of two types of power

The new power is organized around two poles: On the one hand, it is directed towards the individual body, its preparation against the background of social conditions, the increase of its usefulness and the utilization of its powers - the so-called anatomical power . On the other hand, on the “generic body”, the regulation of the population - organic power .

Operating principles

This new “life power” is also based on new functional principles: “This power is designed to produce forces, to let them grow and to order, instead of inhibiting, bending or destroying them.” And “The population as a machine of production Generation of wealth, goods and other individuals [to] use " .

For Foucault, the logical consequence of a power technology that focuses on life is the “normalization society”. Because the point is to secure life and to organize it in a certain way, the subjects are measured against a norm, they are aligned with it and must exist before it. “Instead of drawing the line that separates the obedient subjects from the enemies of the sovereign, it [bio-power, dV] aligns the subjects with the norm by arranging them around them. (...) A normalization society is the historical effect of a life-oriented power technology. "

Even the self-relation of individuals varies: "Western man gradually learns what it is to be a living species in a living world, to have a body, and living conditions , life expectancy, an individual and collective health that can modify and a room in which they can be optimally distributed. "

The central importance of sexuality

An extremely important point of intervention of the new power is sexuality . It allows access to the individual and controls the population through it. “Ultimately, sexuality lies precisely at the junction between the individual disciplining of the body and the regulation of the population. (...) Sexuality is the link between anatomical politics and biopolitics; it lies at the crossroads of the forms of discipline and regulation, and in this function it becomes a first-rate political instrument at the end of the 19th century (...). "

It becomes a matter of the state. It is subordinated to the health system and the rules of normality. Foucault summarizes these developments under the term sexuality dispositiv. This refers to the power-strategic links between discourses and practices that develop around the topic of sexuality at a certain time. The sexuality dispositive first takes effect in the bourgeoisie, which soon began to "regard their own sex as an important thing, a fragile treasure, a secret that must be recognized."

Foucault assumes that the new sexual policy was not about asceticism , but rather a focus on the body, its health and its functions. While the symbol of the nobility was blood, the bourgeoisie used the new technology of sex for self-affirmation . The bourgeoisie "has given itself a body that it was necessary to take care of, protect, cultivate, protect from all dangers and contact and isolate it from others so that it could retain its own value."

A class emerges that locates access to one's own identity, body and self-awareness in sexuality. There seems to be a truth inherent in sexuality that needs to be recognized. In addition, health gains a social appreciation, it is suddenly important to take care of one's own health, to keep oneself healthy and this view is still closely linked to the understanding of subjectivity. Concern for sexuality was inextricably linked with concern for health.

Inherent to this concern is the demarcation from the undesirable, from everything that is threatening, strange and different.

Technologies of the Self

In the later work on the work "Sexuality and Truth", which was laid out in several volumes, Foucault changed his concept. He makes a theoretical shift in terms of the subject. It is no longer primarily a matter of the functioning of the discourses that affect the subject, but rather he develops the concept of the technologies of the self, drawing on Greco-Roman antiquity. “This is understood to mean known and wanted practices with which people not only set the rules of their behavior, but also transform themselves, modify their special being and try to turn their life into a work that carries certain aesthetic values and corresponds to certain style criteria. "

So it is a matter of concrete strategies for action and life design options with which the subject can constitute itself. The individual applies practices to himself in order to achieve a specific goal that is related to his or her historically and socially specific location, i.e. is the consequence of the power that is noticeable in everyday life (e.g. by acting through Division of individuals into categories and the association of certain truths with them).

The individual and his identity

What the individual perceives as his “self”, as his identity, has always arisen against the background of social conditions: “Identity is (...) an execution - a conscious and unconscious activity in dealing with cultural patterns of interpretation and artifacts, the physical Evoke experience that is interpreted as an expression of the natural body. " The " word subject [has] (...) a twofold meaning: being subject to someone by means of control and dependence and being attached to one's own identity through awareness and self-knowledge. " (Foucault 1994, 246f)

Governmentality

In order to clarify the relationship between subjectification processes (which can now be more concretely grasped with the theoretical concept of the technologies of the self) and power mechanisms, Foucault also introduces the term "government" ( governmentality ): "Beyond an exclusive political meaning, government (... ) to numerous and different forms of action and fields of practice, which aim in many ways at the steering, control, management of individuals and collectives and equally include forms of self-management as well as techniques of external management. "

See also

literature

  • Giorgio Agamben : Homo sacer. The sovereign power and the bare life . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-518-12068-9 .
  • Giorgio Agamben: State of emergency. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-518-12366-1 .
  • Michel Foucault : The Birth of Biopolitics. History of Governmentality II. Lectures at the Collège de France 1978/1979. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-518-29409-3 .
  • Michel Foucault: In Defense of Society: Lectures at the Collège de France (1975–1976). 3rd edition Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-518-29185-6 .
  • Michel Foucault: Make life and let die. The birth of racism. In: organic power. DISS-Verlag, Duisburg 1992, ISBN 3-927388-34-3 . (DISS texts 25)
  • Michel Foucault: The will to know. Sexuality and Truth 1st 1st edition Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-518-07470-9 .
  • Michel Foucault: The use of lusts. Sexuality and Truth 2nd 3rd edition Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-518-28317-0 .
  • Petra Gehring: What is biopower? On the dubious added value of life , Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-593-38007-2 .
  • Margret Jäger, Siegfried Jäger , Ina Ruth, Ernst Schulte-Holtey, Frank Wichert (eds.): Biopower and media. Paths to the organic society. ISBN 3-927388-59-9 .
  • Agnes Heller , Ferenc Feher: Biopolitics. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-593-35308-3 .
  • Angelika Magiros: Critique of Identity. “Bio-Power” and “Dialectics of Enlightenment”. For the analysis of (post-) modern xenophobia - tools against anti-alienation and (neo-) racism. Unrast, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-89771-734-4 .
  • Stefanie Duttweiler: Body-Consciousness - Fitness - Wellness - Body technologies as technologies of the self. In: contradictions. Journal of socialist politics in the education, health and social sectors. - Self Technologies - Technologies of the Self. Issue 87, Kleine Verlag, March 2003.
  • Torsten Junge: Self-management as post-pastoral power. In: Malte-Christian Gruber, Sascha Ziemann (Ed.): The uncertainty of the father. For the formation of paternal bonds. Trafo-Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-89626-886-0 , pp. 305ff.
  • Torsten Junge: dead bodies in the head. Foucault, death and bio-power. In: Marvin Chlada , Gerd Dembowski (ed.): The Foucault Labyrinth. An introduction. Alibri, Aschaffenburg 2002, ISBN 3-932710-32-0 , p. 39ff.
  • Thomas Lemke: Biopolitics as an introduction. Junius, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-88506-635-4 . (Review)
  • Ulrich Bröckling , Susanne Krasmann , Thomas Lemke: Governmentality of the Present. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-518-29090-8 .
  • Gerburg Treusch-Dieter : "You will be like God". Transplantations in the human park. In: Theo Steiner (Ed.): Genpool. biopolitics and body utopias . Passagen, Vienna 2002, p. 107ff.
  • Die Röteln (Ed.): "Life does not live". Postmodern subjectivity and the urge for biopolitics. Verbrecher-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-935843-52-6 .
  • Andreas Volkers, Thomas Lemke (Ed.): Biopolitics. A reader , Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-518-29680-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Michel Foucault: The meshes of power. (1981/1985) In: Daniel Defert, Francois Ewald (Ed.): Analytik der Macht. Publishing house Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 2005, ISBN 3-518-29359-1 , p. 230 ff.
  2. ↑ Michel Foucault: The meshes of power. (1981/1985) In: Daniel Defert, Francois Ewald (Ed.): Analytik der Macht. Publishing house Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 2005, ISBN 3-518-29359-1 , p. 230 ff.
  3. ↑ Michel Foucault: The will to know. Sexuality and Truth 1st 1st edition Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-518-07470-9 , p. 165, [emphasis added. in the original, dV]
  4. ↑ Michel Foucault: The will to know. Sexuality and Truth 1st 1st edition Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-518-07470-9 , p. 163
  5. ↑ Michel Foucault: The will to know. Sexuality and Truth 1st 1st edition Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-518-07470-9 , p. 162
  6. ↑ Michel Foucault: The will to know. Sexuality and Truth 1st 1st edition Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-518-07470-9 , p. 170
  7. ↑ Michel Foucault: The will to know. Sexuality and Truth 1st 1st edition Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-518-07470-9 , p. 145
  8. ↑ Michel Foucault: The will to know. Sexuality and Truth 1st 1st edition Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-518-07470-9 , p. 148
  9. ↑ Michel Foucault: The use of lusts. Sexuality and Truth 2 , Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, 3rd edition, ISBN 3-518-28317-0 , p. 18
  10. ↑ Stefanie Duttweiler: Body-Consciousness - Fitness - Wellness - Body Technologies as Technologies of the Self. In: contradictions. Journal of socialist politics in the education, health and social sectors. - Self Technologies - Technologies of the Self. Issue 87, Kleine Verlag, March 2003, p. 32.
  11. ^ Thomas Lemke, Susanne Krasmann, Ulrich Bröckling: Governmentality of the present. Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-518-29090-8 , p. 10.