essay
Running head: RETHINKING BIOPOLITICS 1
Jinglin Chen
ENG106
Kurt-Voss Hoynes
2017/11/30
Rethinking Biopolitics
Part1: Article Summary
David Macey’s Rethinking Biopolitics, Race and Power in the wake of Foucault provides
a critical examination of the ambivalence in the Foucault’s illustration of the concept of
biopower and biopolitics. Macey delicately relates the power of life to the observed struggle and
war, and so is the race. The article notes that during the formation of the nation-state, both the
threat to unity as well as the strength of the population was speculated to come from a contagion
by an alien element. In such a regard, the trope of the race was aligned with the science and
technology of the social emerging at that time as part of the biopolitics. These evolved into the
new rationality of the nation as they found expression in different projects such as the public
hygiene and eugenic with the extreme application evident in Nazism (Macey, 2009).
For instance, In Germany where the central state was developed with a powerfully
organized medical profession following its unification in the 1870’s, eugenic became commonly
known as the race hygiene. Following the degenerations that were associated with rapid
industrialization and urbanization, there was a need to develop a collectivist approach to the
social hygiene. The doctors played a significant role in the process asserting its authority over
the different regions. Evidently, therefore, there is a line of descent that remains, running
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different varieties of eugenics. Most of the discourses that occurred from the times of Hobbles
onwards intended to conceptualize the society as a social body and the body of politics and led to
the widespread belief that the body can be infected from within. These led to the widely
integrated equation of immigrants being equal to disease since they were associated with disease
and hence were a threat. Macey provides a comprehensive argument (Macey, 2009).
Foucault in his article develops argument around the thesis that the power over life is
related to the struggle, war, and race. Throughout this article, the author provides a
comprehensive analysis of the issue of biopolitics and how the biopower has curved the history
of the specific country and provide the case of Nazism as an extreme representation of his
argument. He explicitly supports this argument by turning to the relations between race and
biopower noting that the appearance of the human race of races disrupted, to some extend the
regime of the biopower. He contends that racism is a way that is utilized to introduce a break into
the domain of life that is otherwise under the power of control.
Part 2: Analysis of Thesis
The author also extends the analysis into specific cases and examples that elaborates his
points. He notes the biopower and biopolitics in Germany and the rest of Europe, contextualizing
them based on the historical presentation of the trend. The effectiveness of the argument is
based on the fact that it is explicitly builds on the conceptual relations between the biopower,
biopolitics, racism, eugenics and other pertinent issues providing elaborated instances on how
these concepts developed in different societies and how they remain revenant. One approach the
argument deploys is building on the past understanding by different scholars. As such, it
provides a formidable argument that not only highlights the past understanding of these issues
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but also refreshes their understanding. As such, the article supports the thesis through its
delicately constructed arguments.
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Reference
Macey, D. (2009). Rethinking biopolitics, race and power in the wake of Foucault. Theory,
Culture & Society, 26(6), 186-205.