On the piece 17, March 1976 from the compilations Society Must be Defended, Foucault talks about the advent of an important and new trend in the way politics was done and the creation of the so called "modern nation state" during the end of 17th century. The creation of the "nation state", Foucault believes, involved a new form of coercive power that focuses on the body, or "biopower", and thus a new form of politics - "biopolitics". There is no one concise definition of this term, but rather the whole piece aims at defining and portraying the case of biopower and biopolitics. Nonetheless, we can generally understand the term, as "a seizure of power over the body in an individualizing mode, and a seizure of power that is not individualizing but, massifying, that is directed not at the man-as-body but at man-as-species" (243). In other words, there starts to develop a trend focusing on population control and discipline through the body; using the body as the vessel for political and ideological concerns and/or goals. Within biopower, Foucualt identifies 2 poles: 1) A focus on the individual body, or the “anatomo-politics" of biopower; the body as a machine [of production]. 2) A focus on population [bodies] - or what he understands and defines as biopolitics.

As talked about in class, there are many examples of biopolitics at play, birth rates, marriage laws, disease rates, sterilization, mandatory vaccinations, abortion rates, family planning, contraception, and many more. These examples show us how prevalent biopolitics are in today’s societies. These practices are geared at lowering mortality rates and producing a healthy and optimal population. Anna Davin gives us more insight into the world of biopolitics in the article Imperialism and Motherhood, where we can see how goals of national superiority and the imperialistic race sparred a series of reforms and organizations aimed at preventing child mortality and "bettering" child rearing and caring practices in the overall population. David's piece also shows us how these initiatives were also inspired by eugenics and racism; desires and concerns of building and preserving the perfect race, or nation. In this, nation states focused on the importance of the family structure as the safest and best environment to raise children, and further reinforced the notion of women's role as mother and child bearer. Furthermore, as discussed in class, only certain sectors of the population were to aid in this reproductive race – white, upper middle class, healthy- while others were seen as a part of the poverty issue – overpopulation related to poor people's lacks of sexual restrain.

I think the film Children of Men (Alfonsoo Cuaron, 2006), is a good point of junction between Foucault's ideas on biopower and biopolitcs, and Davin's further study on the manifestations of biopolitics in the article Imperialism and Motherhood. The science fiction setting allows for the creation of a dystopian future in which disparity and coercive state power are accentuated and exaggerated, and so manifestations of these concepts and ideas can be more easily characterized. In relationship to the question of biopower and sovereign power at work in the film, there are several examples all through out. For example, there is a large and strong anti-immigration state enforced strategy to keep anybody who is not a citizen of England from entering the territory. Because of the unexplained infertility, the British state is trying to keep its population strong and alive, and so the infiltration of [illegal] immigrants who will use the resources meant for citizens cannot be allowed. These immigrant populations might bring disease and other such terrors to the territory. So in many ways, these actions against immigrants are about the physical space that bodies occupy as well.

These populations can be considered “abjects”, because they are bodies sent to the periphery of British society in the movie; they are all sent to “refugee camps”, that resemble the early European ghettos for the unwanted populations – Jews, roma people, etc. Of course, this all has to do with sovereign power as well, in which the State is the sovereign entity making decisions on behalf of the population, who gets to stay, who gets to leave/live. However, because of infertility, the State cannot quite “make live” as Foucault calls it, because no matter what it does it cannot fix the problem, so the only thing left to do is to “maintain life”, to “let live”, but only a few, previously, selected will benefit from this. The immigrants do not follow under this category and so must be expelled. In the face of disparity and the impossibility of reproduction, the State tries to keep a tight control over its remaining population to secure its own– nation state - endurance through time. At the same time, it is also closely monitoring its own citizens by, for example, requiring fertility tests in the hopes that one will appear positive.

This is already too long, but I will just mention briefly the presence of different forms of resistance, that further validate Foucault's idea of “where there is power, there is resistance”, as well as reminding us that not all power is negative. The radical resistance group is a clear example of an entity that is trying to keep to promote an ideology and to promote life through different means, outside of State control. For them, as much as for the State and the rest of humanity, the Child is a power figure that can propel them to success. By being in control of where Kee is they can assure themselves the political power the existence of a baby has in their context; and in many ways it justifies their actions. The same can be said of the State, which justifies its heavy control on the population for the good of the people, for the survival of the people. At the same time, however, Kee offers another pole of resistance by allying herself to Theo, thus distancing herself from the interests of the group.

Over all I think the film works for this type of socio-political critique. It's use of documentary style camera work emphasizes a sort of “objectivity”, or at least a distancing from the characters in the movie, no real connection is made possible, when this occurs, in fact, it does not last very long. An example of this is when Theo and Julian are playing with each other and end up kissing, a scene that is rapidly followed by the death of Julian. Even at the end of the movie we are not really sure there is an answer, just hope, we see the boat but we don't know what the outcome of all this will be; in the background we see bombs being dropped in the city, 2 or 3 lives have been saved, but how many have been left behind (pun intended)?

A little piece of visual culture, here is a link to a series of pictures published in the online version of a [slightly right wing] Chilean newspaper I read that is about malnutrition in the world. Here we can see the figure of the Child at play and used to invoke emotional reactions. What about the children? Attention: Some pictures are kind of graphic.

http://www.emol.com/mundografico/?G_ID=15815