What is Biopower? | Michel Foucault

[@angelogreen100]

This video has been incredibly helpful in the thesis work I'm tackling right now. Thank you so much for your clear explanations and various examples, it truly has been monumental in helping me understand these concepts!

[@RevolutionandIdeology]

You are welcome. Thanks for watching!

[@Immaterialgorl]

You guys are great, I’m always impressed when I watch one of your videos

[@RevolutionandIdeology]

Thanks so much!

[@desireesalis9299]

Appreciate this! Ya'll make light work of heavy concepts. Great connections and clear explanations. Thank you kindly

[@RevolutionandIdeology]

Thanks for watching!

[@adrianarojo2104]

great video, really helped me understand biopolitics and biopower better than other videos :)

[@RevolutionandIdeology]

Thank you for watching!

[@rosaleevanvalkenberg3028]

Thank you! This was fun to watch and a ton of help for me to wrap my head around biopower.

[@RevolutionandIdeology]

Thanks for watching!

[@balenciagaboxer]

Great video. Thank you so much for your detailed explanations !

[@coledavidson6640]

This video is so gd good to have less than 1000 views. Helped me with my essay a bunch, thanks guys

[@RevolutionandIdeology]

Glad we could help!

[@gonzogil123]

7:55min Yes, what he describes is a regime of mutilation, and torture, at the service of exploitative feudal politico-econ relations. But yes a regime of torture. An extension, slightly more utilitarian, Inquisitorial practice as in Europe.

[@stefanhuddleston6816]

Several scholars are pushing back against the idea that racism originated with the rise of post-Enlightenment science. There are numerous examples of Black people in particular facing racism or at least a proto version akin to colorism well before the scientific definitions of "race" were formed. The definitions get tricky and there is a great deal of nuance on how we define individual discrimination and institutional racism. For more on the topic from some key scholars challenging the log accept ideas of when racism as we define it today arose I highly recommend: The Origins of Racism in the West edited by: Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, Joseph Ziegler Black Legacies: Race and the European Middle Ages by Lynn T. Ramey The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by David Goldenberg and The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages by Geraldine Heng

[@RevolutionandIdeology]

Thank you for coming through w/the sources here. We'll check 'em out.

[@johnstewart7025]

Is Foucault claiming that there were no public works prior to the 17th century? Aquaducts?

[@exmach81]

Why isn’t Foucault’s account of the genealogy of the concept of racism myopic and Eurocentric and impugnable as such? There was RACIST slavery in Africa perpetrated by Arabs over black Africans, in India by Persians of Indians, etc. Further, Columbus enslaved the indigenous of the very first island he discovered in the new world; after many of the natives simply died from the labour, he then thought of importing African slaves because there was already a well-established Arab slave trade and market of Black Africans. The Arabs weren’t enslaving their own…). Isn’t the whole discussion of racism in the European and American colonial contexts simply, and better, explained by (and subsumed under) Max Weber’s conception of formal rationalization? The formal rationalization of racism in an increasingly ‘scientific’ form of governance, e.g., the various (non-empirical) classificatory schemes. The Western Europeans (plus Americans) just took racism to a far more organized and systematic level. If racism is a tool in furtherance of colonization, then it long antedates so-called biopolitics. (Although one can also talk about the targeted capture of certain people from non-colonized lands (e.g., parts of sub-Saharan African and East Africa), whether by one’s own group or by third parties, as being a function of racism, i.e., why target that group? Because it is considered to be inferior).

[@RevolutionandIdeology]

Through Foucault's lens, first he's speaking specifically to state-racism (the "state" as defined in these lectures is narrowed to the modern). Second, "racism" (you used all caps for emphasis I assume) did not exist as the rationale for conquest and servitude despite recognition of difference. It's completely missing the Positivist attributes required to be considered ideological (functional, genetic, epistemic).

[@exmach81]

@@RevolutionandIdeology Yes, the capitalization was just for emphasis (in contrast to intra-group slavery, as found in Rome and elsewhere). Why should we pay any special mind to this delimited modern state conception over antecedent ones if, amongst other things, the Weberian explanation is overarching? Why, additionally, think that it applies in the case of the Americas? Your discussion of the matter, for example, concerns events long after the colonization process was well underway in both continents. (It also ignores that Catholic theologians' rationalizations of colonization of the Americans from around 1500). Concerning your second point, about racism qua rationale, you're obviously aware that you're advancing a (doubly) negative thesis: that this simply didn't exist as the rationale beforehand (and that it can't fulfill the requisite attributes to be considered ideological). That's a bold claim for which no real evidence is advanced here - one that is nevertheless integral to the thesis' cogency and weight. How does one exclude the conception from a proper account of the Chinese (pre-modern) state's conquest(s) of Vietnam, for example, in a non-question-begging way? What about the original basis for Arab enslavement of black Africans? WHY do all antecedent candidate cases lack the "functional" attribute? Indeed, how are these questions to be satisfactorily and decisively resolved in your favour in a non-question-begging way? (These are sincere questions, by the way, not rhetorical remarks).