Foucalt believes that power is everywhere. There is no place that is void of it. But, the power that comes to most minds is not necessarily the one he is speaking about. What most people think of when they think of power is sovereign power – or power that functions in a top-down form. With sovereign power, the tagline is that it makes die and let live. For example we can take a look at a monarchy. The king is sovereign. He holds the power and exercises on his subjects who are powerless. If the king says that you are going to die, you are going to die. There is no way you can fight or escape it. Foucault does not deny that this type of power doesn’t exist. He just simply reminds us that it is not the only or dominant form it can take on... there is another type of power at work.
In “17 March 1976,” Foucault names this other power ‘biopower.’ This power has a tagline, too. It’s pretty much the reverse of sovereign power. Biopower makes live and lets die. What does this mean? In order to flush that out a little bit, let’s take a look at how biopower functions. In his lecture from Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College de France, Foucault asserts that biopower has two poles. These poles, to my understanding, are the two ways that biopower functions. The first pole uses a disciplinary technique. “[I]t centers on the body, produces individualizing effects, and manipulates the body as a source of forces that have to be rendered both useful and docile” (249). It is concerned with each distinctive body. It involves itself with making each body an effective part of the population. The second pole deals with this population that these individual bodies make up. But instead of utilizing a disciplinary technique, this pole takes on a regulatory approach. To my understanding, instead of being concerned with creating or enforcing on individuals, this pole regulates on a large scale what was enforced.
In Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men, one is able to see examples of the two previously discussed types of power at play. Sovereign power can be seen in the huge military power throughout the film. These soldiers capture and kill individuals - in this case, immigrants - who the government does not find fit to live in England. These individuals cannot escape their fate and have no say in what happens to them. The soldiers and government have sovereign power over them. For an example of biopower in the film, we can take a look at how the government is concerned with birth. On the disciplinary side of things, the government makes it mandatory for all females to have fertility testing done. If they don’t show up for it, it is a punishable offence. On the regulatory side of biopower, the government is tracking the birth rate. They are seeing and monitoring the births – or lack thereof – in the whole population.
It is fascinating to me when both biopower and sovereign power are at play or when they interact. A recent example that comes to mind is the Arizona Immigration law. Some politicians are trying to exercise a sovereign power over illegal immigrants by not allowing them to live in Arizona. (They are being put to death, not literally, but figuratively. Their membership or right to live there is dead.) There is, of course, a resistance to that sentiment. And it is in this resistance that biopower comes into play. The resistance is trying to “make” the immigrants “live” (not in the sense that these people are actually dying but that they have a right to have a certain quality of life that can’t necessarily be found elsewhere).
I think you remind us of an interesting point in your example about the immigration law. The immigrant's resistance to the government's sovereign power links back to Foucault's belief that where there is power, there is resistance.
ReplyDeleteThis led me to wonder if what kinds of powers are resisting. For example, if an organization or person is exercising their sovereign power against another group or individual, can that group or individual fight back using sovereign power? Or, because of the top-down nature of sovereign power do those being persecuted have to rely on biopower or not fighting at all? I can't think of an example off the top of my head as to how sovereign power can be used both ways, but I enjoyed the thought-intriguing example in your post!
I think there is another important point that your example of the Arizona immigration law brings up. It has to do with the racialization of sovereign and/or biopower and the rejection and/or exclusion of bodies. Furthermore, it has to with the criminalization of these bodies as a result of this racialization.
ReplyDeletethis is Law is a fraud and it has no substance because anybody can denounce somebody for suspecting them of being illegal, and this mostly means anybody who is or is perceived as being Latino. Whether a person looks the Latino part tells us nothing about that person as an individual, let alone whether or not they are "illegal" immigrants, or immigrants at all. Yes, by law you are required to have identification with you if you are not a citizen, but what if you are a resident and have an state ID card but no immigration papers? You will probably be taken into custody if you look the part.
The whole thing with this law is that it is based on expectations/norms about a certain type of body and it immediately characterizes that type of body as "illegal", "unwanted", making it abnormal, undesirable.
I agree with you that initially when considering a concept like power- we often think of the extreme. The same top-down form that you addressed in your blog, this represents sovereign power. I agree that sovereign power can be seen throughout the movie Children of Men. I found this interesting because in my blog I wrote about how the military forces regulated the population by trying to preserve the natives (let live) and just leave the immigrants who risked bringing in outside diseases or just simply contaminating the race- just left them in the outskirts of the country to die. This just proves how biopower and sovereign power work very closely together in extreme circumstances like the ones that presented themselves in the film.
ReplyDeleteThe point has been made thoroughly that bodies such as the military wield a kind of sovereign power by Foucault's definitions as well as resistance being a constant presence. My inclination is to then question how Foucault's ideas of of biopower and sovereign power relate to individuals. Take Syd in Children of Men as an example. He was a part of the military, but he wielded not the part of sovereign power to make die, but the part of sovereign power that is to let live. However, Syd's power lies mostly in his ability to manipulate and trick the system--through connections. Does everyone possess either biopower or sovereign power at any given moment? Is there another type of power?
ReplyDeleteYour elucidation of what Foucault means by the difference between sovereign power and biopower is great--your explanation is clear, textually-grounded, and compelling. I also love the example you chose of a contemporary practices in which sovereign power and biopower are at work. Your analysis and the other comments on your post demonstrate very well the ways that race and citizenship shape and are shaped by current immigration law in ways that exemplify the practices Foucault was describing several decades ago. Wonderful job!
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