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Biopower (or biopouvoir in French), coined by French social theorist Michel Foucault,[1] refers to various means by which modern nation states control their populations. In Foucault's work, it has been used to refer to practices of public health, regulation of heredity, and risk regulation, among many other regulatory mechanisms often linked less directly with literal physical health. Foucault first used the term in his lecture courses at the Collège de France,[2][3] and the term first appeared in print in The Will to Knowledge, Foucault's first volume of The History of Sexuality.[4] It is closely related to a term he uses much less frequently, but which subsequent thinkers have taken up independently, biopolitics, which aligns more closely with the examination of the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed under regimes of authority over knowledge, power, and the processes of subjectivation.[5]
- ^ Michel Foucault The History of Sexuality Vol. 1 p. 140 (1976)
- ^ Michel Foucault: Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978 pp. 1–4; see notes on p. 24, notes 1–4 (2007)
- ^ Michel Foucault: Society Must Be Defended Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976 p. 243 (2003)
- ^ Michel Foucault, (1998) The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge. London: Penguin
- ^ "Biopolitics: An Overview". The Anthropology of Biopolitics. 21 January 2013. Retrieved 20 November 2018.