Biopower
Biopower
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What is it?
What is it?
To understand what ‘biopower’ means, we must turn to the theorist that coined the concept itself, Michel Foucault. While the definition of biopower is extremely dense and complex, the easiest way to understand it is by somewhat contrasting it with another term—sovereign power.
Picture: Michel Foucault. 2002. Wikipedia. Web.
Sovereign power is essentially “the right to decide life and death” but not as individual and “not an absolute privilege: it was conditioned by the defense of the sovereign, and his own survival” (41).
As a power meant to protect ‘the king’ (as the establishment), “‘the power of life and death’ was in reality to take life or let live” (Foucault 42).
However, due to transformations in the idea of where and new capabilities of how to exert power, a shift occurred in what used to be “death that was based on the right of the sovereign is now manifested as simply the reverse of the right of the social body to ensure, maintain, or develop its life” (Foucault 42).
Put simply, sovereign power, which worked to protect the king by deciding the life and death of citizens shifted thanks to new technological advances and establishments, for example vaccinations and schools, into a new era of biopower —“a power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death” (43). This ability to foster and protect the lives of citizens or the option to disallow plays a huge factor when reading Iola Leroy, and as I will show later in this analysis, is what makes understanding biopower so essential in studying Harper’s work.
Picture: 2013. The Wrap. By Tim Molloy. Web.
Image: Doctor and Divine. 2016. Prezi. Comp. Kelly Bezio. Web.
A great way to show how biopolitics can be applied to real world events and better understanding works of literature.
Video Credit: Kaitlin Clinnin
Foucault's Biopower vs Harper's Biopower
Foucault's Biopower vs Harper's Biopower
Foucault's biopower, then, is established in institutions like the family, the army, schools, hospitals and thus completely ingrained into the fabric of society. For him, it is the power to protect the people by means of regulation. I argue that Harper's novel, Iola Leroy, demonstrates that biopower is not actually protection for all. And when it is not protection, it is extremely disabling.
"While sovereign power was a preeminently negative power, seizing life, biopower may be said to be a preeminently positive power, creating and enhancing life, at least those forms that are considered to be economically profitable" - (Andreas Oberprantacher 173) I respectfully disagree with Oberprantacher.
It is a common mistake to create binaries from these two powers, painting one as 'bad' and the other 'good', because as this novel reveals, the “consequences” of being black that SparkNotes so vaguely refers to, are a result of this manifestation of biopower.
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