From Power to Biopower

Paul-Antoine Miquel (1)

1 ERRAPHIS - Equipe de Recherche sur les Rationalités Philosophiques et les Savoirs

The concept of " power " plays an important role in Michel Foucault's critic of the classical model of sovereignty. This paper shows how "power" is related to "normalisation" in Surveiller et punir and in La volonté de savoir. Power is not only the way by which somebody acts on the action of somebody, but also a systemic property emerging in a social network. It emerges as a collective strategy, without any strategist, and without any subject. One could call this a "constructive" property. However, "biopower" is not simply "power". It is an "extension" of it. In La volonté de Savoir, Foucault tries to understand how biopower will organise a human social network, in which biological constraints are "reflected" by political ones. Human species is not simply the expression of a natural kind, but also the result of a social and of a political construction. This paper analyses this important change in Foucault's philosophy of power.

Mots clés: Power; Biopower; Foucault

Domaines: Philosophie

Paul-Antoine Miquel. From Power to Biopower. Journal of the studies of humanities, 2011, 15 (6), pp.259-278. ⟨halshs-00714990⟩