Biopower - Pre-Foucault Usage of 'biopolitics'

Pre-Foucault Usage of 'biopolitics'

Although Michel Foucault is the name primarily associated with the concept of biopower and bio-politics, the term Biopolitics was in fact used tentatively in 1911 when the magazine The New Age published the article "Biopolitics" by G. W. Harris and then reused in 1938 by Morley Roberts (1857–1942) in his book Biopolitics. Originally used in the 19th century, the term had already been used by various thinkers from Europe, the German school of Geopolitics ;Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén mentions it in a two-volume book from 1905. Also from British sources Walter Bagehot who wrote Physics and Politics in the late 19th century and gives an explanatory and tentative introduction to the term. And the brilliant but relatively unknown Biologist, one of the founders of Semiology, Jakob von Uexküll, whose unknown pioneering work is most worthy of a mention. Foucault would have known about von Uexkull due to his very close working association with Jean Hyppolite, Georges Canguilhem, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard and Maurice Blanchot. Whether Foucault already knew about the term, or whether he thought it was brand new to him or his audience is unknown. But it seems that the concept pre-dates his use of the term by at least 70 years or more when he started to introduce the concept to his audience from his lectures.

According to Albert Somit (the current editor of Research In Biopolitics series and leading theorist and scholar on biopolitics), by 1972 the literature of biopolitics contained at least some 40 different items. And by the time that Foucault used the phrase in his famous lectures at the Collège de France between January and April 1979, according to Somit, there were several different approaches to the concept of biopolitics.: 1. The case for a biologically oriented political science. 2. The ethological aspects of political behavior. 3. Physiological and psychopharmaceutical aspects of political behaviour. 4. Issues of public policy raised by recent advances in biology. Foucault then offers from his lectures his conclusions from both the schools of thought of the twentieth century from this time; neo-liberalism, German ordoliberalism (the Freiburg School) and the Chicago school (sociology)

Foucault then takes on the concept into a different direction by positioning it between biological processes, the control of human populations through political means; government, management and Social organization;through work,the labor force and the ruthless efficiency of the organization of money through the International monetary systems of whole human populations (bio) and politics (polis),this is essentially Foucault's meaning of biopolitics; human biology and its amalgamation with politics. Foucault then situates liberalism's take on society where liberalism sees the state and society as a societal organism (neoliberalism never mentions it in any of their narratives nor is it ever mentioned by name as it is automatically assumed by liberalism that state organization was automatically, ingrained in the human psyche in the guise of an invisible organic whole called the body politic, where all humans are involved regardless of their class position) capable of producing, multiplying, reproducing and if necessary, having a destructive capability. Foucault's disciples (Giorgio Agamben), etc. offer a chilling account and new meaning to this biopower and its destructive capability; the so-called Thanatopolitics, the systematic slaughtering of millions of people from the population, through the use of political power via the military machine which produced the politics of death an intersection between biopolitics a conception of that individualizing power which constructs the subjectivity of subjects, which has the power to make live and let die from the individual's perspective, which contrasts differently from the sovereign power (the executive power), which has the power to right to live and make die. Where the sword of Damocles is quite literally held over society's head where: "an absolutization of the biopower to make live intersected with the absolute generalization of the sovereign power to make die." Consequently, even the deaths of those in Auschwitz, Belsen concentration camps were literally death camps of organized slaughter for the helpless civilians of World War II what these brutal deaths signified a stark, brutish and cruel reality; "The power in thanatopolitics rests in the degradation of death, where in Auschwitz people did not die, rather corpses were produced, corpses without death, non-humans whose decease is debased into a matter of serial production." This kind of senseless butchery and murder can be justified both politically and morally (rather paradoxically) through the justice system (the so-called Nuremberg Trials) without any recourse to 'justice', made to be internalized as collective consciousness encoded as memory through shared common experience Remembrance Day, Armistice Day for example, where it is frowned upon if you don't wear a poppy particularly if you are a high-profile statesman (a politician), or a celebrity in public appearances on television this is then effectively passed on to future generations in the guise of ceremonies, monuments and memorials. The purpose of this intersection and cross amalgamation is twofold;first it serves as a warning to future generations "watch it you could be next" fear is its ultimate purpose through the aegis of the victor. Secondly, it serves as a deterrent to future events, but can also be resurrected and act as a rallying cry for the next conflict into the future. A crime or a singular event of horrendous proportions serves as a template (such as the holocaust for example) this crime or event had to have a label something to attach itself to, or more importantly something to apportion blame. The term genocide, coined by lawyer Raphael Lemkin serves as good example which forms memory, memory meaning here of no origin you are required to remember the word and learn its meaning, not its origin. However, amidst all the carnage and slaughter Foucault gives us a reminder of those who took part in the blood shed by the users of those who control and are ultimately responsible for the productive resources operations, through no fault of their own, in order to replicate themselves as consumers through being in the unfortunate position of belonging to the unprecedented production and reproduction system in human history; the work force. The industrial working population which comprises the overwhelming majority of human populations anywhere in the world, in a wider context unwittingly there must be at least seen, essentially a systematic position however clandestinely operated, without disruption taking place of economic productivity and activity which still has to take place in a smooth, transitory and unfussy way this then takes on a new meaning Foucault offers us a chilling reminder of those who take part, through no fault of their own, in this involuntary naive complicity he introduces to us the concept of Homo economicus (economic man)

This descriptive discovery of Homo oeconomicus allowed the removal of the sovereign from economic affairs and allowed a societal conception of economic process ; the so-called 'invisible hand' of the market coined by Adam Smith to be 'rationally' justified politically (it is no secret that from this period of the 18th century political representation for the industrial working population in the form of representative democracy was coming to social prominence commonly known as 'the vote'), this would, while paradoxically, maximise the eventual target of economic liberalism for government permanently intervention to produce, multiply, and guarantee the freedoms required by economic liberalism. Foucault then briefly touches on B F Skinner; (the founder of radical behaviorism), and Robert Castel but unfortunately it is very brief however, in Foucault's defence, he himself does admit 'there is little literature' available in France on these techniques, however, to be critical, Foucault did belong to the most prestigious academic institutions in Europe (Collège de France) with unprecedented access to many journals in France and it would be unlikely that they would be unavailable to him. This is a slight point to make but a valid one when considering that he was effectively the 'master of the archive' and was brilliant at excavating 'obscure material' Foucault concentrates more on neo-liberalism's political justification for state existence, rather than Skinner's techniques on controlling human behavior through controlling the mind Manuel Castells while operating in the field of social science dares to venture outside the limited field of social science which he noticed in his brilliant work Communication Power where

It is clear then that any standard neuroscience journal will show you this, it is not the body but the mind, as is often thought by Foucault and the postmodernism movement, both thought that the body (not the mind), an often repeated mistake a simple mistake, but a crucial one. To get to the body the mind had to be rendered docile, not the body, this error is due to the standard social science model an incorrect view which still persist to this day, that the mind and body, the so-called mind–body problem, or in philosophical circles dualism were separate and somehow in conflict with one another which needed to be controlled (within whole populations rendering populations docile) which was what Foucault's original concept of biopower was primarily concerned with. While Foucault's concept of biopower is both evocative thought-provoking (and in some cases somewhat controversial in some quarters) and powerful it is this slight mistake which shouldn't postpone more research on the subject. The biggest challenge to Foucault's sympathetic disciples and independent researchers is this: Can they penetrate (as it stands now) the in-amenable impenetrable discourse that has been erected around the modern 'rational' nation state (rational choice theory, sociobiology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary stable strategy, political science and foundationalism). In doing so can they decode (which the above mention 'social sciences' cannot) the modern power structure and show how it is encoded and woven into these various different cultural social practices and techniques that has been used as a discourse which has been presented over several millennium where explanation of the state is placed on a rational sober footing? Exactly like the natural sciences, as opposed to the Social Sciences where claims can be reduced to fact, rigorous approach is seen as hard work, not polemicist point scoring and guess work. It is certainly not insurmountable where for once there is no room for doubt moving from the shaky and fragile process of descriptive narrative to the sound and solid method of explanation. That is the fundamental challenge that any future theorist should now face.