Biopower and State Racism by Michel Foucault – How the ‘Right to Kill’ Gets Justified in the Modern Era

Mgr. Olivera Radovanović

Bachelor's thesis

Anotácia:

In line with his reputation of a rebel intellectual who shook the constraints of social institutions and challenged the preconceptions about the way society functions, Michel Foucault opened the ‘black box’ of state control and defiantly spoke out about the implicit practices of power. He posited how the old power which granted a sovereign the right ‘to kill and let live,’ i.e. have life and death of an individual at his/her will, was replaced by a new concept, the modern biopower, which assumed the right ‘to make live and let die,’ i.e. regulate society by emphasizing the protection of life and welfare without an explicit threat of death. The premise of such a new society would be that intentional death as such should cease to exist and that the concept of war should become a paradox. However, this logic proved to be groundless. Quite on the contrary, history teaches us that biopower, for all its ‘life-prone’ demagogy, has not reduced bloodshed throughout the world, and that permanent war lurks behind the piece and welfare. It is war that is presented as a struggle for ‘higher ideals’; it is war that is presented as a struggle for biological survival and purity. In consequence, the discourse of the contemporary war found its expression in the discourse of state racism. War is declared on those who are labelled as a threat to both our biological and public health, those who are not perceived to be representative enough, be it mad, politically divergent, sexually deviant, etc. The task of my thesis would be to examine how the biopolitical conception of life and welfare produced consequences directly opposed to its nature. How is it possible in the modern era to justify wars and pronounce their victims collateral damage? In conclusion, I shall also pose the question whether some of the contemporary war-like confrontations might be labelled as racist in Foucault’s sense of words.

Abstract:

In line with his reputation of a rebel intellectual who shook the constraints of social institutions and challenged the preconceptions about the way society functions, Michel Foucault opened the ‘black box’ of state control and defiantly spoke out about the implicit practices of power. He posited how the old power which granted a sovereign the right ‘to kill and let live,’ i.e. have life and death of an individual at his/her will, was replaced by a new concept, the modern biopower, which assumed the right ‘to make live and let die,’ i.e. regulate society by emphasizing the protection of life and welfare without an explicit threat of death. The premise of such a new society would be that intentional death as such should cease to exist and that the concept of war should become a paradox. However, this logic proved to be groundless. Quite on the contrary, history teaches us that biopower, for all its ‘life-prone’ demagogy, has not reduced bloodshed throughout the world, and that permanent war lurks behind the piece and welfare. It is war that is presented as a struggle for ‘higher ideals’; it is war that is presented as a struggle for biological survival and purity. In consequence, the discourse of the contemporary war found its expression in the discourse of state racism. War is declared on those who are labelled as a threat to both our biological and public health, those who are not perceived to be representative enough, be it mad, politically divergent, sexually deviant, etc. The task of my thesis would be to examine how the biopolitical conception of life and welfare produced consequences directly opposed to its nature. How is it possible in the modern era to justify wars and pronounce their victims collateral damage? In conclusion, I shall also pose the question whether some of the contemporary war-like confrontations might be labelled as racist in Foucault’s sense of words.

Keywords

biopower, (bio)war, biological purity, right to kill, state racism

Jazyk práce: English

Datum vytvoření / odevzdání či podání práce: 24. 5. 2010

Obhajoba závěrečné práce

• Obhajoba proběhla 14. 6. 2010
• Vedúci: Mgr. Igor Nosál, Ph.D.
• Oponent: Mgr. Lenka Šafránková Pavlíčková

Masaryk University

Faculty of Social Studies

Bachelor programme / odbor:
Sociology / Sociology