Biopower

Biopower is a concept introduced by Michel Foucault to describe the modern form of power that seeks to manage, optimize, and regulate human life through the control of bodies and populations. In The History of Sexuality, Volume One, Foucault argued that it has two poles: an anatomo-politics of the human body, which disciplines individuals through institutions such as schools, prisons, barracks, and hospitals, and a biopolitics of the population, which regulates birth, death, health, and longevity through statistics and public policy. Unlike sovereign power, which was the right to take life or let live, biopower works by fostering life and disallowing it to the point of death. It is closely tied to the rise of capitalism, which required docile bodies and a healthy workforce. Giorgio Agamben and Achille Mbembe extended the idea through bare life and necropolitics, while Nikolas Rose examined how contemporary biomedicine and genetics govern through individual self-management. Donna Haraway, Judith Butler, and Paul Rabinow have also drawn upon the concept in studies of technology, gender, and science. Critics note that Foucault's account can seem diffuse. Biopower remains central to analyses of health, sexuality, surveillance, race, and governance.