Re: [Foucault-L] biopolitics on film

[Richard Bailey <rb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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.