Foucault: Biopower, Governmentality, and the Subject

[Music] [Music] power it's an ambiguous concept in physics we talk about power as the transfer of energy or the potential to transfer energy the Sun has enough power to for example and social and political power is thought of in a similar way the power to stop someone doing something the power of the police to stop a speeding car but compared to predictable physical objects the force of gravity on a rock or the waterfall to generate hydroelectric energy the way people and institutions wield power upon other people and how power has an effect on those people is a difficult concept to understand French philosopher Michel Foucault whose thoughts I've introduced here had a particularly influential theory of how power operated it underpins almost all of fucose work but it's also worth looking at in depth for another reason it's the most frequent criticism of him that his work is cynically all about power [Music] this is true but the cynicism is misdirected because although fucose interested in the power to for example stopping someone doing something he is more interested in power in a more neutral sense how power can be productive as well as oppressive like the waterfall and the rock [Music] to understand this it's essential to understand how three through Kotian concepts relate to one another the subject power and knowledge in the essay why study power the question of the subject Foucault writes my objective has been to create a history of the different modes by which in our culture human beings are made subjects what's he mean by subjects he has a unique understanding of the subject of how the human mind is constructed he says it's become objectified that is that it's a subject and an object at the same time take the study of the speaking human Foucault says it's only in the 19th century that we begin to study human speech as an object as a science as something to be understood we start to study grammar then philology linguistics we start to categorize measure compare the human becomes an object it becomes written dime quantified but inboxes interpreted humans as a species become things to be studied themselves but this objectification then becomes subjectification this new information has power over us encourages us to act in certain ways it subjective eyes us in a very obvious sense for example we teach children in schools by the standards dictated by the history of linguistics or economics based on a very limited and particular understanding of how humans have produced and consumed over the last few centuries this information becomes authoritative many would argue that the way linguistics as an example has developed and the reasons we teach children this or that grammar is purely rational a product of becoming more intelligence as a species Foucault says that the word rationalization is dangerous he writes what we have to do is analyze specific rationalities rather than always invoke the progress of rationalization in general specific rationalities as if there are more than one his point is that if there are innumerable different ways of doing something as exemplified by the thousands of types of language and communication over the world what justifies doing something one way over the other his answer is power that social systems move us to do certain things in certain ways between 1970 and 1980 to Foucault gave a series of lectures at the college to France one of the more influential in 1978 was security territory and population which was published posthumously in it he takes bio power as the central concept he said this year I would like to begin studying something that I have cooled somewhat vaguely biopower by this I mean a number of phenomena that seemed to me to be quite significant namely the set of mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political strategy of a general strategy of power he goes on to argue that our traditional understanding of power is a product of the Enlightenment starting in the 17th century social contract theorists like Hobbes Locke and Rousseau all discussed the justifications for and limits of government of why and when rulers should have power over us Hobbes for example argued that the sovereign the king or the queen had power because if no one ruled anarchy would ray but the type of power these thinkers conceptualized was juridical power it's the power of law over us the banning of certain actions speeding for example and the threat of violence if the rule is not a dead - it's the threat of violence that always underpins it it may not seem like it but in reality if you refuse to pay the speeding tickets and you refuse to go to prison in the end there'll be some kind of violence the baton or the gun directed against you but as these enlightenment philosophers were writing a new type of power was emerging the power not of ruling but of governing - of managing grain prices of maximizing profits of foreign trade through mercantilism then slowly of poor relief education health care the disciplining of delinquency the practices of psychiatry of encouraging certain types of medical knowledge of planning and executing epidemic control in all of these cases a certain type of power is exercised using certain methods by certain groups of people over others and importantly all of this was not the exercising of juridical power not simply the power of the law but of what Foucault biopower the power to produce subjects he argues that this is a type of power that the state in the West is inherited from the church it doesn't simply command do or do not and punished according to that law it also aims to know people's minds and actions seeks to direct thought and desire itself fires and other catastrophes are dramatic events which attract wide attention but we ignore the less spectacular but continuous wastage and erosion of our population every day we are tragically wasting our human resources by failure to provide for a helpful and effective living wastage of Human Resources occurs at all age levels but infancy asthma specially hazardous period [Music] Foucault recognizes two distinct things happening and amongst all of this on the one hand there's simply the relay of information the communication of ideas through psychiatric care for example or medical knowledge of moral instruction of just rules but there's also something else the power relations that make the relay in of them the instruction the authority effective he writes the activity which ensures apprenticeship and the acquisition of aptitudes or types of behavior is developed there by means of a whole ensemble of regulated communications lessons questions and answers orders exhortation coded signs of obedience differentiation marks of the value of each person of their levels of knowledge and by the means of a whole series of power processes enclosure surveillance reward and punishments that pyramidal hierarchy he asks how can we separate the two how can we understand them distinctly he says that bio power doesn't have an effect on people physically necessarily but on possible future actions their possibilities and choices he says this power is an action upon an action it constrains and encourages the teacher for example has the power to mark tests assign grades which employers used to judge potential candidates the teacher doesn't hold a gun over the student's head but the student knows that the power that they do have has an effect on their own future choices and possible actions he writes faced with a relationship of power a whole field of responses reactions results and possible inventions may open up he goes on it's a total structure of actions brought to bear upon possible actions it incites it induces it seduces it makes easier or more difficult in the extreme it constrains or forbids absolutely it is nevertheless always a way of acting upon an acting subject or acting subjects by virtue of their acting or being capable of action and finally to govern in this sense is to structure the possible field of action of others juridical power the power of law is subtracting it removed the option to do something to speed for example and in a way is repressive but again the biopower Foucault describes is productive - sometimes institutions like the government police or the military exert their power by physical repressive shows of force crowd control tear gas executions military occupations but they also exert bio power by way of discipline and training again we think of an action on an action handling weapons driving flying schedules tests grading assault courses police conduct these are the moments bio power is exerted through the possibility of rewarding or punitive measures the encouraging or constraining of certain actions these actions then have an effect on others citizens for example and their possible actions where they go and how they act take criminology and it's used by governments there must be checks so you provision investigation correction but also preventative measures what's the crime rates in a certain area how can one predict crime and prevent it to what extent should surveillance of any kind be used how can we understand the criminal is it worth trying to correct what level of comfort and freedom should be allowed are they dangerous what's optimal what's the norm the base rate that we compare all of this to Foucault rights discipline classifies the components that's identified according to definite objectives what are the best actions for achieving a particular result what's the best movement for loading ones rifle what's the best position to take what workers are best suited for a particular task what children are capable of obtaining a particular result ultimately he says it reduces to economics the fundamental question is economics and the economic relation between the cost of repression and the cost of delinquency many spend their time in unhealthy surroundings that foster juvenile delinquency especially among those who have had an unhappy childhood this is an inexcusable waste of our most valuable resource the records of our juvenile courts all plainly show how widespread is this tragic waste of youth this wastage could be prevented by more adequate provision for the basic needs of youth [Music] all of these modern phenomena of objectifying humans have the effect of creating standards by which humans should be measured a norm or a normalizing judgment how good is child X at maths compared to the norm how much crime is in area Y compared to the north how efficient is soldier Zed compared to the norm which leads Foucault to another point an autumn a standard is only possible in reference to a group and modern government ality is only possible in reference to a population all of these practices emerge at the same time as our modern understanding of what a population is in security territory and population Foucault shows that definitions of population used to define the term as repopulating a territory it had a slightly different meaning to today in the seventeenth century begins to take on its modern usage population becomes important analytically to study to understand to quantify because the population of a country provides manpower economic development agriculture I put it becomes the source of a state's wealth birth death sickness and productivity rates become important population then as an aggregate creates a mean an average citizen and a normative curve against which exams tests and requirements can be assessed the question can be asked how can the correct sort of population be encouraged it's only them with the modern concept of population that we get the modern form of government ality he writes boldly at first sight and somewhat schematically we could say that sovereignty is exercised within the borders of a territory discipline is exercised on the bodies of individuals and security is exercised over a whole population we can see then how sovereignty juridical power the power of the gun of the baton of law is exercised over a specific territory this territory has a population the productivity of which is important to its sovereignty and then discipline threads all of this together creating subjects through power and knowledge the middle years of life should be the most productive years on farm and mill and factory yet many are not at work because of accidents illness and occupational disease millions of productive hours are lost reducing income for workers and their families and reducing production for society [Music] many have criticized fucose understanding of power and its usefulness philosopher Charles Taylor concludes that if power knowledge and the subjects a result of a particular political or social regime then there can be no such thing as a truth independent of its regime unless it could be that of another so that liberation in the name of truth could only be the substitution of another system of power for this one and similarly in Nancy Fraser writes that because Foucault has no basis for distinguishing for example forms of power that involve domination and those that do not he appears to endorse a one sided wholesale rejection of modernity as such clearly what Foucault needs and needs desperately a normative criteria for distinguishing acceptable from unacceptable forms of power I think these are fair criticisms but for Foucault this is exactly the point there are no universal normative criteria for distinguishing acceptable from unacceptable forms of power what works for one group may not work for others what utilitarian for one group may not be for one individual because the social and political use of power is the product of human goals and desires that are continually shifting and changing which is why no universal normative criteria can be established Foucault writes one is dealing with mobile and transitory points of resistance producing cleavages in a society that shift about fracturing unities and affecting re groupings burrowing across individuals themselves just as the network of power relations ends by forming a dense web that passes through apparatuses and institutions without being exactly localized in them so to the swarm of points of resistance traverses social stratification individual unities in many ways Foucault is simply trying to describe social and political power as scientists have done for power in physics but it is a difficult task and one that we're only just beginning to try to understand if you like these videos I need your help and here's my request if you think you get the same value from four of these videos as you do from just one cup of coffee then please consider pledging just $1 per video that's three to four dollars per month to keep this channel going you can even limit your pledge to one dollar a month and if you pledge $5 out add your name to the credits to those that already 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Channel: Then & Now

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Keywords: Then & Now, Then and Now, History, Philosophy, Politics, foucault, michel foucault, power, biopower, governmentality, the subject, why study power, social and political power, security territory population, power/knowledge, understanding foucault, introduction to foucault, discipline and punish, geneaology, history of madness, history of sexuality, critical theory

Id: AXyr4Zasdkg

Length: 19min 53sec (1193 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 12 2019

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[u/lewlewwaller]

This video look at Michel Foucault's ideas about social and political power through a number of concepts - biopower, governmentality, and the subject.

Foucault developed his understanding of power throughout a number of texts, including 'Why Study Power?', the lectures collected in 'Security, Territory, and Population', and the selected interviews in 'Power/Knowledge'. Importantly for Foucault, biopower shapes individuals as well as constraining them. Modern power is very different to the juridical power that social contract thinkers like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau theorized - the power of the sovereign to make laws.

Modern power aims to know the efficiency of a population and manage it. It creates norms and standards. It disciplines and encourages.

In the final section, I quickly address a few criticisms of Foucault's work.