The term biopolitics is a neologism used by Michel Foucault to identify a way of exercising power not over territories , but over the lives of individuals and populations . This type of power is called Biopower.
The Meaning of the concept of biopolitics is colsely related to that of biopower . The latter refers to a set of strategies aimed at directing power relations to make life manageable. Biopolitics would then be the type of politics and management that this biopower seeks.
To arrive at this concept, Foucault made a historical study of the ways in which power was exercised. According to the French philosopher, until the seventeenth century , traditional power understood the body as a machine. In this way, power would try to influence the education, skills and behaviors of individuals to produce docile and fragmented bodies. For this purpose, tools such as surveillance, control or tests on capabilities would be developed. However, from the eighteenth century and with the development of disciplines such as Demography , those who administered power would have found a new field in which to exercise it.
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