Foucault: Biopower, Governmentality, and the Subject

I look at Michel Foucault's ideas about social and political power through a number of concepts - biopower, governmentality, and the subject.

Foucault developed his understanding of power throughout a number of texts, including 'Why Study Power?', the lectures collected in 'Security, Territory, and Population', and the selected interviews in 'Power/Knowledge'.

importantly for Foucault, biopower shapes individuals as well as constraining them. Modern power is very different to the juridical power that social contract thinkers like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau theorized - the power of the sovereign to make laws.

Modern power aims to know the efficiency of a population and manage it. It creates norms and standards. It disciplines and encourages.

In the final section, I quickly address a few criticisms of Foucault's work.

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I Should Have Been More Human by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...