Study about biopolytics in Foucault: link population-governmentality

• Grant number: 18/07504-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2018
• End date: February 28, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Hélio Rebello Cardoso Júnior
• Grantee: Damaris Caroline Quevedo de Melo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Foucault's work is subdivided into three phases: Archeology (1960), Genealogy (1970) and Aesthetics of Existence (1980), each phase marks the significant change in Foucaultian methodology, and delimits the trajectory of the author's thoughts . In the 1970s (Genealogy), Foucault began to delineate a new meaning in his studies, starting to center his thoughts on the technology of 'Power'. Power must be understood, in Foucault, as something that works in a network, which runs through a social structure, which capillarizes itself into micro-powers. There are two political technologies that mark the relations of power from the end of the eighteenth century: discipline and biopolitics. The disciplinary practices that were used before in order to manage individuals. Biopolitics contrasts with the traditional modes of power that are based on death, it represents a set of technologies, whose purpose is the control of population life. We will try to study at first how the biological gains a political vision according to Foucault. Specifically, we will inquire into the meaning of life from the concept of Biopolitics, and then we will analyze why people are a political problem in modernity and what the effects of biopolitics are.