Foucault: Biopower, Governmentality, and the Subject

I look at Michel Foucault s ideas about social and political power through a number of concepts - biopower, governmentality, and the subject. Foucault developed his understanding of power throughout a number of texts, including Why Study Power? , the lectures collected in Security, Territory, and Population , and the selected interviews in Power/Knowledge . importantly for Foucault, biopower shapes individuals as well as constraining them. Modern power is very different to the juridical power that social contract thinkers like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau theorized - the power of the sovereign to make laws. Modern power aims to know the efficiency of a population and manage it. It creates norms and standards. It disciplines and encourages. In the final section, I quickly address a few criticisms of Foucault s work. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Or send me a one-off tip of any amount and help me make more videos: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JJ76W4CZ2A8J2 Buy on Amazon through this link to support the channel: https://amzn.to/2ykJe6L Follow me on: Facebook: http://fb.me/thethenandnow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thethenandnow/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/lewlewwaller Credits: Stock footage provided by Videvo, downloaded from https://www.videvo.net I Should Have Been More Human by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/