Michel Foucault defines biopower as “the power to make live” and then “making live or letting die” (Foucault 247). In Children of Men, Foucault’s idea of biopower is exemplified thoroughly.
“Sexuality exists at the point where body and population meet. And so it is a matter for discipline, but also a matter for regulation.” (Foucault 254) Part of biopower is the regulation of the population so that the state may make the social body live (through better health practices, etc). In Children of Men, the United Nations tries to regulate the sexuality of the population. They make it illegal for a woman not to attend her fertility-testing—punishable by incarceration. Not only is regularization an aspect of biopower, but I believe that this policy of the state also relates back to the original definition of biopower—to make live. The state does not just wish to know just how horrendously infertile the population is, but wishes to, through obtaining information, find and exploit an hospitable womb in order to create life itself.
Race plays a major role in the film as well as in Foucault’s arguments. With the passing of Baby Diego, the world exploded into a fearful frenzy. The United Nations immediately declared all immigrants to be illegal and therefore in need of deportation. Foucault believes that racism stems from the concept that “The more inferior species die out, the more abnormal individuals are eliminated, the fewer degenerates there will be in the species as a whole, and the more I—as species rather than individual—can live, the stronger I will be, the more vigorous I will be.” (Foucault 254)This being all an extension biopower—making the population live by cutting out the weaker links, if you will. Obviously, the United Nations was hardly having an issue with an “inferior species” mixing genetically with their DNA. It is the original cause of racism which Foucault discusses. It is almost comical, then, that racism pervaded even once the world had become infertile. This racism is seen again when Theo suggests that Kee reveal her pregnancy to the state and thereby gain a safe haven for her child. Kee reminds Theo harshly that the state would keep her a secret through the birth of her child when they would hand her baby off to some “posh” Londoner. The United Nations would not accept the hope of the world lying in an African woman.
The single shot action-sequences were meant to keep your attention on the here and now. I felt that this mirrored that there was only one hope for humanity, so why look anywhere else? More than anything else, the presentation emphasizes that the child is the only hope. Biopower is based around prolonging the existence of our species. Since children are the future of our species—the continuation—our society has become saturated with this image. The text of the photo which I chose says “A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I live in, or the kind of car I drove: however, the world will be different because I was important in the life of a child.” There lies an idea that the only point of life is to create more life—to disregard ones personal goals and instead take on the duty of producing healthy children for the state to use and to create more children and therefore yet another generation of our species. Anna Davin speaks specifically of this fact in “Imperialism and Motherhood.” But I have to wonder…am I a horrible human being if I really just want a career and maybe a Cadillac?
Works Cited:
Ebert, Roger. "Children of Men." Chicago Sun Times. 5 Oct. 2007. Web. 13 Sept. 2010.
Foucault, Michel, Mauro Bertani, Alessandro Fontana, François Ewald, and David Macey. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1975-76. New York: Picador, 2003. Print.
http://www.art.com/products/p10018147-sa-i881449/priorities-child.htm
I was excited to see your use of this quote is your blog post, but have a different interpretation of it. My mother has been the operator of a daycare for over 30 years and has a wall in the daycare with pictures of all the kids and this quote in the middle of the wall. She truly sacrificed a lot of things, including a decent a salary, to make sure that many kids got a better future because they had a babysitter that cared.
ReplyDeleteI completely understand your view of children and reproducing. If it is not someone's desire to have children, they are often looked down upon in our society and that should not be. However, I can see why many people want to reproduce and raise decent humanbeings to further humankind. As someone who enjoys helping people and doing all I can to make the world a better place, I don't think I would have any interest in making the world a better place if there wasn't going to be people living in it after I'm gone. I think the hope of future children living on this planet is what keeps humans striving to make it a better place.
You raise fantastic questions here regarding the role of the Figure of the Child in contemporary political practices as well as the film Children of Men. Your analysis of state racism is particularly well-articulated, and I love the ways you link Foucault's critique of the centrality of racism in the modern nation-state to the film's deployment of race and sexuality as a key technique of biopower. And I wonder if elaborating upon the Anna Davin argument might help address some of the issues that the commentator here raises--how, for example, does Davin help us think about the ways that race shapes which children the state values and which it does not? Which actual children have the privilege of approximating the Figure of the Child, and which children does the state kill/let die in order to preserve the Figure of the Child?
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