On Wed, 19 May 1999, Mitch Wilson wrote:
> In Ian's point below, about the nature of biopower being a domain "ends
> where killing begins," isn't your premise, that biopower has/or should have
> an eternal nature, antithetical to Foucault's concept of power?
I don't think that's my premise.... I haven't given a great deal of
thought to "biopower" (I've only recently started paying attention to the
last part of HS1--which Foucault said was the most important part of the
book--because I've taken up a project on genocide), but my take on it is
that "biopower" is the name Foucault gives to the form of governmentality
growing out of the rise of biology and medicine--hence biopower is a
relatively recent phenomenon, perhaps a transient phase in Western
government.
> I mean, shouldn't biopower, as a domain, be flexible and mutable
> according/in response to the struggles of the times in which it
> operates, so that in one era it may, at first, not include killing as
> a technique on the body but then, in another era, come to include
> killing as a technique?
I guess so--but again, for Foucault, genocide seems to be the paradigm
case for biopower: the excision of foreign bodies from the body politic.
> Isn't that an aspect of Foucault's theory of power--that strategies
> aren't innate, that they don't have/function by an internal
> perpetuity?
Right, but I think that once he starts talking about biopower, he's no
longer talking about "Foucault's theory of power" (i.e. what held sway
through D&P and up until the last part of HS1) ... or at least it has been
modified. At any rate, "biopower" is a certain kind of power; it is not,
for Foucault, coextensive with power in general.
> Could this "shift" that Ian spoke of--a very good point which is going to
> send me running back, soon as I get off work, to read the last section of
> HS1--couldn't this shift not be a contradiction in Foucault's account of
> power relations, but rather a very good example of the transient "nature"
> of power?
I don't think so, because by Foucauldian definition, power governs the
behaviour of people by making them "freely" choose to do certain things.
F. makes this clear in one of the interviews with Dreyfus and Rabinow, I
think (unfortunately I don't have the texts at hand)--which, come to think
of it, seems to show that this may be an actual contradiction and not a
transition, since those interviews were conducted in the early '80s.
Perhaps he changed his mind and changed it back again :).
Matthew
---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
dear readers, my apologies.
I'm drifting in and out of sleep.
---------------------------------(R.E.M.)----------------------------------
> In Ian's point below, about the nature of biopower being a domain "ends
> where killing begins," isn't your premise, that biopower has/or should have
> an eternal nature, antithetical to Foucault's concept of power?
I don't think that's my premise.... I haven't given a great deal of
thought to "biopower" (I've only recently started paying attention to the
last part of HS1--which Foucault said was the most important part of the
book--because I've taken up a project on genocide), but my take on it is
that "biopower" is the name Foucault gives to the form of governmentality
growing out of the rise of biology and medicine--hence biopower is a
relatively recent phenomenon, perhaps a transient phase in Western
government.
> I mean, shouldn't biopower, as a domain, be flexible and mutable
> according/in response to the struggles of the times in which it
> operates, so that in one era it may, at first, not include killing as
> a technique on the body but then, in another era, come to include
> killing as a technique?
I guess so--but again, for Foucault, genocide seems to be the paradigm
case for biopower: the excision of foreign bodies from the body politic.
> Isn't that an aspect of Foucault's theory of power--that strategies
> aren't innate, that they don't have/function by an internal
> perpetuity?
Right, but I think that once he starts talking about biopower, he's no
longer talking about "Foucault's theory of power" (i.e. what held sway
through D&P and up until the last part of HS1) ... or at least it has been
modified. At any rate, "biopower" is a certain kind of power; it is not,
for Foucault, coextensive with power in general.
> Could this "shift" that Ian spoke of--a very good point which is going to
> send me running back, soon as I get off work, to read the last section of
> HS1--couldn't this shift not be a contradiction in Foucault's account of
> power relations, but rather a very good example of the transient "nature"
> of power?
I don't think so, because by Foucauldian definition, power governs the
behaviour of people by making them "freely" choose to do certain things.
F. makes this clear in one of the interviews with Dreyfus and Rabinow, I
think (unfortunately I don't have the texts at hand)--which, come to think
of it, seems to show that this may be an actual contradiction and not a
transition, since those interviews were conducted in the early '80s.
Perhaps he changed his mind and changed it back again :).
Matthew
---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
dear readers, my apologies.
I'm drifting in and out of sleep.
---------------------------------(R.E.M.)----------------------------------