Biopolitics is an intersectional field between biology and politics. It is a political wisdom taking into consideration the administration of life and a locality’s populations as its subject. To quote Foucault, it is ‘to ensure, sustain, and multiply life, to put this life in order."
[1]
The term was coined by
Rudolf Kjellén, who also coined the term
geopolitics,
[2] in his 1905 two-volume work The Great Powers.
[3] In contemporary US
political science studies, usage of the term is mostly divided between a
poststructuralist group using the meaning assigned by
Michel Foucault (denoting social and political power over life) and another group who uses it to denote studies relating
biology and political science.
[4]
Various Definitions
In Kjellén's
organicist view, the
state was a quasi-biological organism, a "super-individual creature". Kjellén sought to study "the civil war between social groups" (comprising the state) from a biological perspective and thus named his putative discipline "biopolitics".
[5]
The
Nazis also used the term occasionally. For example,
Hans Reiter used it in a 1934 speech to refer to their biologically based concept of nation and state and ultimately their
racial policy.
[4]
Previous notions of the concept can actually be traced back to the
Middle Ages in
John of Salisbury's work
Policraticus in which the coined term
body politic is actually used. The first modern usage of the term (in English) starts with an article written by GW Harris in an article for the New Age in 1911 in which he advocates the liquidation of "lunatics" by 'state lethal chamber'.
[6] The concept then starts to gather pace in the 19th century with
Walter Bagehot's work
Physics and Politics in which he reflects on the term as if he was a trained scientist in the form of
Jakob von Uexküll. Bagehot didn't have a scientifically trained mind such as von Uexküll so he (Bagehot) falls rather short in the explanation of the term. Nevertheless the book has some novel points particularly on the subject of
natural selection and politics.
[7]
Morley Roberts in his 1938 book Bio-politics used to argue that a correct model for
world politics is "a loose association of cell and protozoa colonies".
[4]
Robert E. Kuttner used the term to refer to his particular brand of "scientific racism," as he called it, which he worked out with noted
Eustace Mullins, with whom Kuttner cofounded the
Institute for Biopolitics in the late 1950s, and also with
Glayde Whitney, a behavioral geneticist. Most of his
adversaries designate his model as antisemitic. Kuttner and Mullins were inspired by
Morley Roberts, who was in turn inspired by
Arthur Keith, or both were inspired by each other and either co-wrote together (or with the Institute of Biopolitics) Biopolitics of Organic Materialism dedicated to Roberts and reprinted some of his works.
[8]
In the work of Foucault, the style of
government that regulates
populations through "
biopower" (the application and impact of
political power on all aspects of human
life).
[9][10]
In the works of
Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri,
anti-capitalist insurrection using life and the body as weapons; examples include flight from power and, 'in its most tragic and revolting form',
suicide terrorism. Conceptualised as the opposite of biopower, which is seen as the practice of sovereignty in biopolitical conditions.
[11]
The political application of
bioethics.
[12][13]
A
political spectrum that reflects positions towards the sociopolitical consequences of the biotech revolution.
[12][13]
Political
advocacy in support of, or in opposition to, some applications of biotechnology.
[12][13]
Public policies regarding some applications of biotechnology.
[12][13]
Political advocacy concerned with the
welfare of
all forms of life and how they are moved by one another.
[14]
The politics of
bioregionalism.
The interplay and interdisciplinary studies relating
biology and political science,
[15] primarily the study of the relationship between biology and political behavior.
[16] Most of these works agree on three fundamental aspects. First, the object of investigation is primarily political behavior, which—and this is the underlying assumption—is caused in a substantial way by objectively demonstrable biological factors. For example, the relationship of
biology and political orientation, but also biological correlates of
partisanship and
voting behavior.
[17] (See also
sociobiology.)
According to Professor
Agni Vlavianos Arvanitis,
[18][19][20] biopolitics is a conceptual and operative framework for societal development, promoting bios (Greek = life) as the central theme in every human endeavor, be it policy, education, art, government, science or technology. This concept uses bios as a term referring to all forms of life on our planet, including their genetic and geographic variation.
[21]
In the colonial setting
Catastrophes are periodically mobilized as vehicles for historical transformation. European states often found themselves grappling with sociobiological propensities of populations. Mercantilism and capitalist modes of production led to a modern biopolitical approach to famine: the modern state depended on providing a diet sufficient to keep the biological machines of industrial capitalism running. The British developed biopolitics in tandem with colonization to help solidify their control over the Irish.
The French Third Republic in Western Africa also employed biopolitics in their colonial efforts. The fin-de-siecle revolution in microbiology and specific developments in public health legislation aided the French. Furthermore, thanks to the germ theory of disease pioneered by Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, the etiology of some of the most deadly diseases—cholera and typhoid—began to be understood in the 1890s, and the French used this new scientific knowledge in the tropics of West Africa. Illnesses like bubonic plague were isolated, and vectors of malaria and yellow fever were identified for the political purpose of public health. They passed public health laws to introduce up-to-date health standards. The goal was for African subjects to respond in exactly the same way as metropolitan citizens to market incentives and new technologies imposed by a progressive state. Thus, public health was a political concern in the sense that the state hoped citizens would be more productive if they lived longer.
Michel Foucault
French philosopher and social theorist
Michel Foucault first discussed his thoughts on biopolitics in his lecture series "Society Must Be Defended" given at the
Collège de France from 1975 to 1976.
[22] Foucault's concept of biopolitics is largely derived from his own notion of
biopower, and the extension of
state power over both the physical and political bodies of a population. While only mentioned briefly in his "Society Must Be Defended" lectures, his notion of the concept of biopolitics (Foucault never invented the concept) has become prominent in social and humanistic sciences.
[23]
Foucault described biopolitics as "a new technology of power...[that] exists at a different level, on a different scale, and [that] has a different bearing area, and makes use of very different instruments."
[24] More than a disciplinary mechanism, Foucault's biopolitics acts as a control apparatus exerted over a population as a whole or, as Foucault stated, "a global mass."
[24] In the years that followed, Foucault continued to develop his notions of the biopolitical in his "The Birth of Biopolitics" and "The Courage of Truth" lectures.
[25][26]
Foucault gave numerous examples of biopolitical control when he first mentioned the concept in 1976. These examples include "ratio of births to deaths, the rate of reproduction, the fertility of a population, and so on."
[27] He contrasted this method of social control with political power in the Middle Ages. Whereas in the Middle Ages pandemics made death a permanent and perpetual part of life, this was then shifted around the end of the 18th century with the introduction of
milieu into the
biological sciences. Foucault then gives different contrasts to the then
physical sciences in which the
industrialisation of the population was coming to the fore through the concept of work, where Foucault then argues power starts to become a target for this milieu by the 17th century.
[28][29] The development of vaccines and medicines dealing with public hygiene allowed death to be held (and/or withheld) from certain populations. This was the introduction of "more subtle, more rational mechanisms: insurance, individual and collective savings, safety measures, and so on."
[30]
