Biopower

:For the Saab automobile engine of the same name, see BioPower.

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Biopower was a term originally coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is closely related to a term he uses much less frequently, but which subsequent thinkers have taken up independently, biopolitics.

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For Foucault, biopower is a technology of power, which is to say, a way of exercising power encompassing various techniques into a single technology. For Foucault, the distinctive quality of this political technology is that it allows for the control of entire populations. It is thus essential to the emergence of the modern nation state, to modern capitalism, etc. Biopower is literally having power over other bodies, "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations" (History of Sexuality, Vol.I, p.140). It relates to the governments concern with fostering the life of the population, and centers around the poles of disciplines ("an anatomo-politics of the human body") and regulatory controls ("a biopolitics of the population").

BioPower: :For the Saab automobile engine of the same name, see BioPower....

French: French can refer to more than one article:...

Philosopher: A philosopher is a person devoted to studying and producing results in philosophy. The word, "philosopher," literally means "lover of wisdom." Greek: "????? + ?????"...