What Is Biopower?

Biopower is defined as the “practice of modern nation-states regulating their subjects by subjugating their bodies and controlling populations through biopolitical techniques” (Foucault, 1984). To clarify of the definition of Biopower, biopolitics is the “control, regulation, and monitoring of bodies within a collectivity to maintain social control” (Foucault, 1984). In simpler terms, biopolitics is bio – life and politics – the activities associated with governance. Thus, biopolitics is the governance of life. In order to have an in depth understanding of biopower, it is vital to know the context in which the concept was born.
Michael Foucault, the philosopher who can up with the concept, was born in Poiters, France. One possible reason as
to why he developed his interest in this subject matter was due to society and his relationship with his father. To explain, Foucault was a “brilliant but emotionally troubled son of an authoritarian physician” (Gutting, 2005). His father was a surgeon and presumed his son would be one also. He was emotionally troubled because his father and society did not accept his homosexuality. Foucault was even “exposed to shocktherapy, in an attempt to make him straight” (Gutting, 2005). These personal experiences may have been the reason why he formulated these theories in the first place. When it comes to writing his theory of biopolitics, Foucault “uses these concepts very abstractly and provocatively while in other cases they are meant to refer to precise phenomena and historical events” (Kristensen, 2013). Because the concepts were also used in unspecified terms, Foucault’s ideas are also able to be interpreted with many contemporary issues.
The current issue of inequity in the US health care system is due to the government’s unjust exercise of biopower. As mentioned previously, the purpose of biopower is to maintain social control by regulating bodies. This maintenance is completed by the media and governmental activities. Inherently, the media allows for the implementation of immigrant regulation. That is to say, it establishes the social norms that permit such restrictions. For example, Chavez reports in his book, The Latino Threat, on “March 24, 2009, Pat Buchanan stated on MSNBC: ‘Mexico is the greatest foreign policy crisis I think America faces in the next 20, 30 years’” (p. 1).
Unsurprisingly, the next year, Chavez writes “Arizona’s governor Jan Brewer signed the United States’ toughest immigration law” (p.
1). Another example, as Chavez accounts, is when “Sharron Angle ran against Democrat Harry Reid. Angle’s campaign aired an advertisement that featured three Latino-looking male youth, cross the image were the words, in bold, illegal aliens (p. 2). The statement on MSNBC and the anti-immigrant commercial is only two of many examples in which the media aimed to influence a certain type of thinking, a social norm. A social norm of viewing immigration as a problem, Latinos as a threat. This allows regulation to be implemented. As Chavez describes, “through the media, politicians desiring to restrict immigration have been able to represent undocumented immigrants as undeserving criminals and possible terrorists” (p. 10). This type of representation, isolating a group of individuals, is not new. Lupton writes in his book, Medicine as
Culture,
Those of foreign nationality, the poor, and the working class have historically been singled out for attention by public- health authorities as agents of disease, requiring forcible ‘hygiene’ programs sometimes involving the destruction of their homes and isolation from the rest of society. (32)
Historically, Latinos have been classified as the ‘other’.
This classification allows for the media’s continuous negative imaging of the Latino population. Surely, with the cause of the media reinforcing a ‘social norm’ of the Latino population, there is the effect of governmental regulation. For instance, Chavez documents “President Ronald Reagan signed into law, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). The major provisions were sanctions for employers who hired undocumented immigrants and an amnesty program for over a million undocumented immigrants” (p.8). It is clear, the purpose of passing such a law is to limit the number of undocumented immigrants who come to the US. However, the underlying motive behind this law is control. It is the supervision of the number of bodies that go in and out of the United States, the very definition of biopower. Another example is during the Clinton administration. President Clinton passed the PRWORA 1996 and IIRIRA 1996. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA 1996) requires all states to have a program that provides information about the newly hired, so that child support can be effectively enforced (Office of Child Support Enforcement). This law up front seems harmless. Though, it has some serious implications involved. That is to say, the requirement of providing information of the newly hired to the federal government is another form of biopolitics. To be clear, the federal
government wants to regulate who gets hired in order to “effectively” provide child care. This is biopower at its finest, the combination of overseeing who gets what kind of care. Then, there was the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA 1996). This law heightened border enforcement and solidified the government’s role in providing assistance to aliens (Germain and Stevens 1996). Is it a coincidence that both of these laws passed in the same year? I think not. Both of the laws share the common ground of controlling and monitoring the number of bodies that go in and out (mostly in) of the United States. The governmental activity is not constricted to laws. As Lupton puts it,
Those of foreign nationality, the poor, and the working class have historically been singled out for attention by public health authorities as agents of disease, requiring forcible ‘hygiene’ programs sometimes involving the destruction of their homes and isolation from the rest of society (p. 32)
As we are seeing, it is structural inequality that reinforces biopower. The combination of multiple factions, the media and the government, contribute to biopower. Thus, with the role of the government and media kept in mind, there exists inequity in the US health care system. There is inequity because the media only targets a certain group of people. There is inequity because the laws put in place are specified towards a certain group of people. In both cases, it is the migrant Latino population who are the victims. The question comes in, is the US healthcare system just to allow the inequity to perpetuate?