Biopower is a form of power exercise through large-scale regulation of biological and social life, closely related to the concept of Biopolitics. The term originated with Foucault, who used it to denote the use of modern science (especially medical science and statistics ) as a means of power. While states threatened with violence against the body of the subject (death penalty, war, torture), the modern state, according to Foucault, uses science to maintain and regulate life. Viewed in this way, modern health care is a means of power, because it offers the ruler the opportunity to medicalize and correct (physical or psychological) abnormalities. Eugenics and genocide are for Foucault the most extreme forms of biopower.
Other philosophers who have dealt with biopower include Giorgio Agamben , who views biopower from ancient Greece as an integral part of sovereignty , and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri who combine Foucault's understanding of biopower with ideas from Deleuze and Guattari ( Capitalism et Schizophrenia ) and Italian Autonomists in their Analysis of Geopolitics in the Age of Globalization ( Empire / The Crowd). Hardt and Negri regard biopower as the response of contemporary rulers to biopolitics.
see also: Discipline and Punish
