foucault and biopolitics

Blimey—ever had that eerie feeling while queuing up for your booster jab, or scrolling through yet another public health alert, that somebody’s got a spreadsheet full of your life choices? Nah, love, it’s not paranoia. It’s foucault and biopolitics quietly sipping tea in the background, watching you argue over whether to wear a mask on the Tube. Michel Foucault — bless his French-philosopher soul — wasn’t just scribblin’ in notebooks like a moody GCSE student; he was sketching the invisible wiring of modern power. His take on foucault and biopolitics flips the old “king chops heads off” model on its head: now, power doesn’t just *punish*—it *nurtures*, *tracks*, *optimises*, and — yes — *vaccinates*. It’s governance with a stethoscope, not a sword. And in Blighty? Oh, we *excel* at it: from calorie labels on Greggs sausage rolls to contact-tracing apps named after Norse gods, biopolitical logic is stitched tighter than a Savile Row waistcoat.

Right—before you start quoting Foucault at your local pub quiz and accidentally win a pint of Doom Bar, let’s get one thing straight: while some scholars like to nod reverently at Georges Canguilhem or even old Karl himself, the bloke who truly *lit the fuse* on biopolitics was Foucault. Yep, the father of biopolitics isn’t some dusty 18th-century doc with leeches in his pocket—it’s Michel, with his turtlenecks and intense gaze, strutting into Collège de France in the ’70s like he’s about to drop a mixtape. In his lectures—later compiled as “Society Must Be Defended” and “The Birth of Biopolitics”—he traces how, from the 18th century onward, states stopped obsessing over *individual bodies* (hence: *discipline*) and shifted to managing *populations* (hence: *biopolitics*). Think workhouses → welfare state → NHS app notifications. One seamless continuum of foucault and biopolitics, innit?

Here’s the kicker—most of us were taught power = cops, prisons, kings with big wigs. Foucault? He went, “Nah, mate—*that’s* so 1666.” His real brain-bender? Power isn’t just top-down repression. It’s capillary: trickling through schools, clinics, even *your Fitbit*. Especially with foucault and biopolitics, power becomes *productive*. It doesn’t just say “don’t”; it says “*do*—and here’s how, when, and why.” Want an example? Consider the UK’s Change4Life campaign. It doesn’t *ban* sugar—it *nudges* you with cartoon apples and postcode-based obesity stats. That’s biopower: soft, data-savvy, and eerily persuasive. As Foucault put it in History of Sexuality Vol. 1: “Power is everywhere… because it comes from everywhere.” Chilling. Poetic. And oddly applicable to your local GP surgery’s waiting-room leaflets.

Let’s not romanticise this, though. Foucault’s genius wasn’t just in spotting how states care for life—it was in exposing how that same care *selects* who *deserves* to live well. Enter: *thanatopolitics* (yes, that’s a word—and no, it’s not from a metal band). When foucault and biopolitics get tangled with racism, xenophobia, or austerity logic, the result isn’t just health policy—it’s *hierarchy*. Think Windrush scandal: people *legally* here for decades suddenly “non-citizens” overnight, denied healthcare, jobs, dignity—all under the guise of “population management.” That’s biopower turning necropolitical: not just managing life, but quietly authorising death-by-bureaucracy. Foucault hinted at this in his 1976 lectures: “If the power of the modern state is to foster life, it must equally… expose *some* lives to death.” Heavy stuff. Makes you side-eye that “hostile environment” policy a bit harder, doesn’t it?

Love it or moan about it (usually the latter, bless us), the NHS is arguably Britain’s most magnificent monument to foucault and biopolitics. Born in 1948—not from charity, but *calculated sovereignty*—it’s a system where care and control coexist like tea and biscuits. Free at point of use? Glorious. But also: your GP knows your BMI, smoking status, cervical screening date, and whether you’ve missed your flu jab—all logged, flagged, followed up. That’s not surveillance *despite* care; it’s surveillance *through* care. Even the infamous “postcode lottery” in treatment access? Textbook biopolitics: uneven life-chance distribution masked as clinical “efficiency.”

Surprise twist: Foucault *liked* neoliberal theory—at least, he found it *fascinating*. In his 1978–79 Collège lectures (The Birth of Biopolitics), he spends *ages* dissecting Hayek, Friedman, and the Chicago School—not to endorse them, mind, but to show how they reinvented biopower. Forget the nanny state: enter the *entrepreneurial self*. Now, “health” isn’t just your right—it’s your *duty*. Your *responsibility*. Missed your screening? “Well, you *chose* that.” Gain weight? “Just *exercise more*, love.” Under foucault and biopolitics, even wellness becomes a moral audit. And guess who pays? Not the food giants. Not the landlords with mouldy flats. *You*. With a side of £150 for a private dermatologist if NHS waiting lists stretch longer than the M25.

Pop quiz: what’s more powerful than a riot cop? A *heatmap*. In the age of foucault and biopolitics, numbers aren’t neutral—they’re *narrative engines*. Consider these UK-relevant nuggets:

Source: ONS & Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2024. See how those dips aren’t just “bad luck”? They’re *policy outcomes*—framed as “demographics” or “lifestyle choices,” but shaped by a biopolitical calculus that quietly accepts some decline as… *manageable*. As Foucault warned: “The ‘evidence’ is never innocent.”

Ah, 2020. When “R” numbers became dinner-table chat and everyone suddenly fancied themselves an epidemiologist. But beneath the graphs and the grim daily briefings? A full-blown biopolitical theatre. Lockdowns, track-and-trace, vaccine passports—these weren’t just emergency measures. They were *accelerations*. Overnight, the state claimed unprecedented authority over bodies *in motion*: where you walk, who you hug, whether your pub quiz happens on Zoom. And yet—crucially—it was sold not as coercion, but as *civic duty*. “Protect the NHS” wasn’t a slogan; it was a *biopolitical mantra*. Even dissent got folded in: anti-maskers weren’t “rebels”—they were “vulnerable to misinformation,” ripe for *behavioural intervention*. That’s foucault and biopolitics at peak efficiency: resistance becomes just another data point to optimise.

But hold up—Foucault wasn’t a doom-monger. He believed power *always* breeds counter-power. And in Britain? We’ve got *flair* for it. Look at grassroots mutual-aid networks during lockdown: neighbours feeding elders, GPs smuggling insulin to undocumented folks, midwives crowdfunding for asylum-seeking mums. These aren’t “charity”—they’re *biopolitical sabotage*: creating care *outside* state metrics, refusing the logic that some lives are “low priority.” Even the #LetUsSwim protests (yes, *that* one) were low-key biopolitical: reclaiming bodily autonomy in open water, against risk-assessment algorithms. Foucault would’ve grinned: “Where there is power, there is resistance—and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.” In other words: same playground. Different rules.

Right—enough theory. How do we *live* with this? First: *question the categories*. “At-risk group”, “hard-to-reach community”, “non-compliant patient”—these aren’t descriptions. They’re *technologies*. Second: *demand transparency in algorithms*. If your local council uses predictive analytics to allocate social care (and they do), ask: *whose data trained it? Whose suffering is invisible in the model?* Third—and most radical—*reclaim “health” as collective joy*, not individual optimisation. A society that measures success by *years lived in pain* (not just *life expectancy*) isn’t broken—it’s working *exactly* as foucault and biopolitics predicted. But we can rewrite the script. Start with community kitchens. End with universal basic services. Fancy a go? Then hop over to The Great War Archive, dive into our History section, or lose yourself in the symbolic labyrinths of Iconography Byzantine Art Hidden Meanings—because sometimes, decoding power starts with reading a halo.

References

• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michel-Foucault
• https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n09/michel-foucault/the-birth-of-biopolitics
• https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/biopolitics-after-foucault