Re: [Foucault-L] biopolitics on film



Mark Kelly wrote:

I have to disagree with Machiel here - biopower is the government of
populations. Foucault is extremely precise about the relation of
biopower to discipline in Society Must Be Defended.

In the HoS v.1 Foucault talks about the anatamo-politics of the body as machine and the biopolitics of population marking the era of biopower. I have always seen "biopower" as covering both government and discipline in Foucault? This would seem to be the way it is taken up by Agamben et. al.

Its not quite film but I have always found Big Brother (the TV reality show) as interesting when thinking about Foucault. I find it quite startling how the contestants do not guard their behaviour in the face of truly a panoptic situation, rather they behave extravagantly, as if they are in fact characters in a scripted melodrama. The hidden cameras clearly produce rather restrict their behavior.

I think this says a lot about how surveillance has so thoroughly permeated society and subjectivity.



Folow-ups
  • Re: [Foucault-L] biopolitics on film
    • From: Mark Kelly
  • Replies
    Re: [Foucault-L] biopolitics on film, Thomas Sparrow
    Re: [Foucault-L] biopolitics on film, Simone Browne
    Re: [Foucault-L] biopolitics on film, M. Karskens
    Re: [Foucault-L] biopolitics on film, samata biswas
    Re: [Foucault-L] biopolitics on film, Mark Kelly
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