Michel Foucault Flashcards
For a long time what was one of the characteristic privileges of sovereign power?
The right to decide life and death
How did the supposed right to decide life and death undergo transformation after theoreticians got a hold of it?
The power to decide death no longer absolute but indirect
Could only be justified if ruler threatened by external forces - require subjects to defend the state (not directly proposing their death)
What was another way in which a ruler was justified to end life?
If a subject rose up against them and broke the law - could wield control over death as punishment
What does Foucault mean when he says the right of life and death is a dissymmetrical one?
A sovereign can only exercise their right of life by exercising or refraining from its right to kill
In what society is it proper that a sovereign wield the right over life and death?
Where power is exercised as a means of deduction (power is the right to appropriate a portion of wealth and a tax of goods and labour on the people and to seize things and lives)
What has happened in the west in regard to mechanisms of power?
Deduction no longer a major form of power but one elements among others - more about generating forces as opposed to destroying them
How has the idea of death changed?
No longer the right of the sovereign but the reverse of the right of the social body to maintain and develop its life
What is the contradiction regarding the way the idea of death has changed?
Since the 19th century war has never been so bloody e.g. holocaust
What is the new counterpart of the power of death?
a power that exerts a positive influence on life e.g. organising it and helping it multiple
According to Foucault wars are no longer waged to defend a sovereign but to what?
On behalf of everyone - whole populations are mobilised for the purpose of wholesale slaughter
What has become the principle that defines the strategy of states in war?
One has to be capable of killing in order to go on living (has been heightened in the atomic age)
What is now at stake in wars?
Not the existence of a sovereignty but the biological existence of a population
What example does Foucault use as well as war?
Death penalty (the other way a sovereign is justified in exercising the power of death)
Why did the death penalty become rarer?
As power began to embrace its role as the sustainer and multiplier of life it became counter-intuitive to apply the death penalty
What became the only justification to use the death penalty?
Not the defying of the sovereigns law but by stressing the monstrosity of the criminal and his biological threat to others
