SS 211 Online Glossary

SS 211 Online Glossary
Liberalism

Liberalism primarily deals with Foucault's question "why must one govern?" Additionally, it is the concept that governments must justify their existence, rather than just exist. For every action the government takes, it must have a justification. It is the role of the government to govern as little as possible while maintaining order and not infringing on the personal lives of citizens. (Conor Woods)

Governmentality

Governmentality is the way in which an object is defined and through this definition of the object, whether it is tangible or not, it may now be intervened upon and regulated. This regulation is directley linked to the creation of a "norm" within society. "...using overall mechanisms and acting in such a way as to achieve overall states of equilibration or regularity; it is, in a word, a matter of taking control of life and the biological processes of man-as-species and of ensuring that they are not disciplined, but regularized."(Society Must Be Defended, Foucault, 247)

( Maggie, Dinah, Catherine)

sovereignty

Sovereignty is the control that is excercised over life by some form of authority. This was a power that was once limited to kings/queens; this power once lay in the hands of one person. It was these peoples sovereign right to decide whether individuals lived or died. Foucault stated that this power was situated as taking life or letting live. Foucault argues that this power has undergone a transformation where this power is no longer under the sole control of soveriegn authority individuals. Additionally he states that this power shifted from the control of death to the management of life, that it is no longer taking life or letting live, but fostering life or letting die.

~Casey

biopower

Biopower is a collection of techniques of power which take whole populations as their subject. In Foucault's own words, biopower is the way power is harnessed through "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations," which, "applied...to man-as-species.... to a multiplicity of men... to the extent that they form... a global mass". (The Foucault Reader, 262) and (Society Must Be Defended, 242). ~Jake brooks

In other words, biopower is the “technology of power over ‘the’ population” (P247). This new mechanism of biopower is organized “around discipline and regulation” (260), allowing for the control (or subjugation) of the populace. [Lecture 11, 17 March 1976, In Society Must Be Defended .] -Akira Céspedes Pérez

governmentality

Govermentality is the process by which an object is defined, society is one example, and then intervened upon to ensure the meeting of normalized standards. -Dinah Handel

An example of governmentality as society is hygiene. Hygiene is a norm, established by society, and as some are more hygienic than others, a social stratification develops. Social stratification, due to societal norms, is the arguably the genesis of racism.

liberalism

Liberalism speaks to the relationship between the government and the governed, both the individual and the collective. This relationship is built upon the premise that there should be limits to government and that government should have a minimum presence in the lives of citizens. Appropriate government is just enough government to effectively discipline and regulate the population, but not too much as to infringe upon its citizens. The authority of the government or sovereign must be justified so that individual sovereignty is also nurtured (Tenzin Manell).

Liberalism is a method in which governments/sovereigns legitimize the power they hold both economically and politically by the existence of a free market. Furthermore, it forms a relationship between the governing power and governed individuals by allowing citizens to control as well as be controlled. ("Foucault and Political Reason" Barry, Osborne, Rose)

sovereignty

Sovereignty is possesing the privelege to make decisions regarding the life of other human beings. Specifically, to have the right to decide if others are to have death froced upon them or allowed to live. "The soverign exercised his right of life only by exercising his right to kill, or by refraining from killing; he evidenced his power only through the death he was capable of requiring." The Foucault Reader p. 259 -Conan Schein

I would add to that: sovereignty is government over death and distribution that is not substantially subject to any superior control. In other words, the sovereign is the top of the chain in terms of substantial powers, while the sovereign's rhetoric may still invoke some religious or plebian imperative. (Zach Phillips)

“anatomo-politics of the human body”

Anatomo-politics of the human body, along with biopolitics of the population, is one of the poles of biopolitics, and, according to Foucault, the first of the two to be formed. It operates at the level of the individual (as opposed to the population as a whole) in an attempt to mechanize and discipline the body. “Centered on the body as a machine,” anatomo-politics strives to ensure the body's “disciplining, the optimization of its capabilities, the extortion of its forces, the parallel increase of its usefulness and its docility, [and] its integration into systems of efficient and economic controls.” (Foucault, p. 261) Rabinow and Rose argue that in the past, anatomo-politics of the human body and biopolitics of the population converged at the level of sexuality, but that the two have recently (within the last 50 years) decoupled at this point. -Charles Swank *************** Anatomo-politics regards the human body as an on object that may be disciplined and trained. In context to biopower, it refers to the disciplinary spectrum under which the human body can be subjected at the cellular, organic, genetic and other levels. These politics can be manifested in the form of public health policies, government nutritional guidelines etc. It is the way in which governments can tailor populations to their sovereignty through the medium of the cultivation of the human body.

Camino Troya ****

"Anatamo-politics of the human body" can be thought of how one exerts power over the actual, physical body of members of the population. The politics of the anatomy, the power that is exerted over the parts of the body and who is allowed to do what with their bodyparts, or what could potentially be done with said body parts [stem-cells, cloned organs, etc.]. But it may be as simple as what is in the foods that a body is allowed to ingest, what is in the water that a body is cleaned with, and who decides such content.

-Thomas Sullivan

“biopolitics of the population”

My understanding of 'biopolitics of the population' refers to the concept that government has developed the authority to control certain biological practices and processes. This concept includes "Stragies for interventions upon collective existence in the name of life, health, initially addressed to populations" (Rabinow, 197). Rabinow and Rose explain It is part of biopower in the sense that it exemplifies the concepts of "letting die" and "making live".&amp;nbsp; Some examples of this include reproductive practices and race relations. (195)- Maya W.B.



To understand "biopolitics of the population," I would examine the two aspects of the phrase. First, the idea of the population is key because that the politics and power of the state are wrapped up around the population shows the key change in how power has to cope with industrialization and population explosions (Foucault, "Society Must Be Defended, 249). Bodies must be controlled not individually through discipline but en masse, and this is not just for the sake of continuing the control of bodies from the age of sovereignty on, but because the population constitutes a new kind of body essential for the continuation of the state. So this new body must be controlled through the politics of population, such as life expectancy and birth rate (246). These issues are made into political problems, so that a certain issue such as birth rate gives rise to many different "political" problems on many different "levels of intervention" (247). So under the biopolitics of birth rate, one sees issues in the United States between how birth rates are encouraged or discouraged differently between populations (white middle class vs. Puerto Ricans, mentally ill and people with disabilities, "minorities" like the recent mother or octuplets). Between these different populations, different standards of institutionalized care (health insurance policies, prevalence of hospitals...) arise, and different choices are made available and marketed to different populations, placing the onus of political performance on the individual actors/bodies (e.g. marketing DES to white middle class mothers in the U.S., and foisting birth control and promoting sterilization to Puerto Rican women).

According to Foucault biopolitics by definition deals with the population: "as a political problem... as a biological problem and as power's problem" (Society Must Be Defended, p. 245) Biopolitics of the population are the standards and regulations, and the politics surrounding the standards and regulations, of the levels at which power intervenes to regulate the bodies of the population of as a whole. So biopower is the intervention, and biopolitics are the levels and politics of intervention,, life expectancy and birth rate (246). This is the "power of regularization" (247). (Tulin)