bio-power

This week’s readings all relate to each other through one important theme: bio-power, which can be explained as the power through the investment and subjugation of the body and human life. The three readings all explain the transformations in institutions which allowed for a better care of life. Each passage has a very different approach, starting with Right of Death and Power over Life, where Foucault analyses the various transformations of power to decide life and death. In ancient Rome, it was the father of the Roman family who decided, through the right of patria potestas, whether to dispose or not of the lives of his children and slaves. Later on, it was the right of the sovereign to execute those who posed a threat to his life. War was declared against those nations which posed a threat to the sovereign and to the population under his power. Wars were legitimized no longer in the name of the only sovereign, but in the name of the biological existence of an entire population. We notice a change from a power that was defined by one’s right to kill, to a powerthat instead of ending life, fosters and protects it, and declares wars in the name of life. This form of “bio-power”, or in other words a power that defends life, is essential in modern capitalism. Keeping a nation’s citizens “alive” and strong, through discipline, medicine, makes the nation more powerful and productive. The second passage, Body of the Condemned, focuses particularly on the death penalty. First Foucault describes the horrible tortures involved in the death sentence in European countries and the US, focusing particularly on the French example. He then goes on to show how gradually the theatrical element of execution was eliminated. Now execution occurs behind prison walls, and has the criminal’s close family as the only witnesses. The atrocity of the punishing execution also decreased. Before, executions would last for many hours, and involved several forms of torture. By the mid-nineteenth century, the guillotine and the noose became the dominant instruments for death sentence. Nowadays, there is no physical torture involved with death penalty, and no spectacle for the public. The punishment is not supposed to be equal or greater than the crime itself. It is meant to be corrective. Imprisonment and death penalty are meant to cure society, and keep criminality out of it. They are meant for positive purposes. Today a doctor supervises the execution, and injects the criminal with tranquilizers to make the moment of his death easier for him to handle. And the time of imprisonment or mental hospitalization depends on the criminal’s intentions, his psychological health and mental stability. Through this passage we note another change from a brutal institution founded on “death”, to an institution founded on the betterment of society and its citizens’ lives.The last passage, Birth of Social Medicine, explains how strong medical interventions in the past have lead to a standard, institutionalized form of medicine available to the public.Foucault goes through the birth of social medicine in three different countries. In Germany we have the birth of state medicine, which involved the overall improvement of public health. An bureaucratic organization that gathered information from hospitals and doctors made observations on sicknesses within the state. This organization appointed officers to every region, who could control such data. Medical degrees were also standardized. The second example, urban medicine, saw its birth in Paris, France. Here an urban plan was created to guarantee that water and air were free of elements that might cause illnesses. All places that were considered insalubrious were to be relocated, such as slaughterhouses, cemeteries. Anything constricting the passage of clean air was to be destroyed. Daily reports on the purity of the water were made, to make sure citizens were drinking, washing and cooking in clean water. In England we have the birth of our third example of social medicine, also known as labor force medicine. This was the origin of welfare medicine. In fact, starting in the nineteenth century, it was common belief that poor people were a danger to public health, for they lacked in hygiene and couldn’t protect themselves from epidemics. Therefore a plan was made to offer them medical care free of charge or for a very small compensation. This system guaranteed the control of epidemics, and of locations that posed a threat to public health.
These mechanisms guaranteed the safeguarding of public health, therefore, human life, and allowed for most of today's western nations to become the well oiled machines they are.