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Biopolitics and Biopower: The Foucauldian Approach and Its Contemporary Relevance

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Bioethics and Biopolitics

Part of the book series: Advancing Global Bioethics ((AGBIO,volume 8))

Abstract

The notions of “biopolitics” and “biopower” enjoy commonsensical plausibility in many fields of humanities today. From philosophy and sociology through cultural and gender studies up to various forms of contemporary political thinking, these notions are used and reused in many descriptive and normative approaches. However, even if it is often highlighted that the work of the French historian and social theorist, Michel Foucault served as a cornerstone in attaching the prefix ‘bio’ to the words ‘politics’ and ‘power’, the question as to for what reasons these terms, designed originally for historical research in Foucault, could reach such an interdisciplinary popularity remains to be worth studying. With this context in mind, this paper has two objectives. On the one hand, it seeks to reconstruct the meanings and roles of the notions of biopolitics and biopower as they are displayed in Foucault’s historical and theoretical researches. On the other hand, it aims to foreground the theoretical significance as well as the descriptive and normative values that could be associated today to these notions in various fields of humanities within the contemporary conjuncture of biopolitical thinking.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It must be noted that the term “biopolitics” was invented in the 1920s (Esposito 2008) and was employed discretely from the 1970s onwards in very different traditions of political and social theory (Liesen and Walsh 2012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    Ádám Takács

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  1. Ádám Takács
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Correspondence to Ádám Takács .

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  1. University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary

    Péter Kakuk

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Takács, Á. (2017). Biopolitics and Biopower: The Foucauldian Approach and Its Contemporary Relevance. In: Kakuk, P. (eds) Bioethics and Biopolitics. Advancing Global Bioethics, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66249-7_1

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