An Academic Analysis of the Notion of Biopower.pdf [article]

agoni abraham
2021 figshare.com  
From the time of the ancient and medieval political scholars, society has been shaped by the findings of individuals on specific happenings of nature. Man has constantly tried to explain the logic behind nature; the birth of Social and Political theory. From Socrates through to Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and others, there has been a conscious effort to sustain debates that seek to unveil what is true about a phenomenon. Concepts such as Justice, Democracy, Freedom among others have been grappled
more » ... with by these scholars and for centuries, man is as yet to arrive at a conclusive explanation of any of them. Like other concepts, the discourse on power has traveled through time to what we have in the present day. Hobbesian theories on power revealed that only the strongest could use their power to survive in the state of nature which was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. His arguments on the need for power were extended in the book, The Leviathan where he preached for there to be one sovereign ruler who would be able to lead the people without fear of favor, however, on the people's consent (British Library, 2021). Nonetheless, one of the scholars whose literary work on Power has been the fulcrum of academic debates as well as the trigger for the birth of other social concepts is the French philosopher, Mitchel Foucault. The writings of Georgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Antonio Negri, and Michael Hardt are all responses to the literature of Foucault. With a strong influence on a wide range of humanistic and social science disciplines, Foucault is responsible for the prevalence of concepts such as Biopolitics, Biopower, Necro-politics, governmentality, and subjectivity. This essay thus, seeks to identify what is definitive of Governmentality, to what extent has it influenced contemporary power relations? It will also examine the intricacies of Biopolitics while trying to establish a link between Governmentality and Biopolitics. Examples will be drawn from a wide range of sources in order to explain the tenets o [...]
doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.16570818.v1 fatcat:v6adl7pcknd3fm5rurd6tl43su