Biopolitics, Governmentality and Humanitarianism

'Caring' for the Population in Afghanistan and Belarus

Volha Piotukh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780415855457
• eBook ISBN: 9781134514946
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Central Asian History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book critically analyses the changing role and nature of post-Cold War humanitarianism, using Foucault's theories of biopolitics and governmentality.

It offers a compelling and insightful interpretation of the policies and practices associated with 'new humanitarianism in general, as well as of the dynamics of two specific international assistance efforts: the post-2001 conflict-related assistance effort in Afghanistan and the post-2000 Chernobyl-related assistance effort in Belarus.

The central argument of the book is that 'new' humanitarianism represents a dominant regime of humanitarian governing informed by globalising neoliberalism and is reliant on a complex set of biopolitical, disciplinary and sovereign technologies. It demonstrates that, while the purposes of humanitarian governing are specific to particular contexts, its promise of care is more often than not accompanied by sovereign and/or biopolitical violences.

Making an important contribution to existing scholarship on humanitarian emergencies and humanitarian action, on biopolitics and governmentality, this book will be of much interest to students and scholars of humanitarianism, critical security studies, governmentality and International Relations generally.

1 ‘Working with Foucault after Foucault’¹

DOI: 10.4324/9781315889689-2

Biopolitics, governmentality and the international

A whole series of objects were made visible for possible forms of knowledge on the basis of the constitution of the population as the correlative of techniques of power. In turn, because these forms of knowledge constantly carve out new objects, the population could be formed, continue, and remain as the privileged correlate of modern mechanisms of power.

(Foucault, 2007: 79)

The debate over how Foucault’s work is best used … is entangled with a series of debates over how his work is best interpreted.

(Pickett, 2005: 1)

Introduction

In the last two decades, Michel Foucault’s theorising on biopolitics and governmentality has been very influential in many social science disciplines. The proliferation of biopolitics and governmentality studies has generated many debates and even disagreements about how Foucault’s original ideas can/should be interpreted and used. In this book, Foucault’s theorising on biopolitics and governmentality, firmly positioned within his broader thinking on power, informs the analysis of humanitarian governing at different levels. Accordingly, this chapter is intended to establish the theoretical framework for this analysis. The ever-expanding field of biopolitics and governmentality studies, and a lack of consensus on a number of key issues, suggest that there is significant value in going back to and re-reading Foucault’s own work, as well as in examining the secondary scholarship.

As far as the concept of biopolitics is concerned, Esposito (2008: 13) argues that Foucault’s redefinition² of the concept ‘has opened a completely new phase in contemporary thought’. Foucault’s original account, and its readings by Agamben (1998), Hardt and Negri (2000), and, most recently, by Esposito (2008), have led to multiple accounts of biopolitical governing.

While considering Foucault’s account of biopower and biopolitics, this chapter emphasises its appreciation of the differences between sovereignty and biopower (discipline and biopolitics) and of the complex nature of biopolitics (as having both positive and negative potential). The relationship between sovereignty and biopolitics is also addressed, especially because it is important for elucidating the central paradox of biopolitics, i.e. how a life-preserving and life-promoting power can turn lethal, and because it has been argued (e.g. Agamben, 1998; Esposito, 2008) that this relationship is undertheorised in Foucault. His reconceptualisation of racism is shown to be important for this discussion. Agamben’s and Esposito’s readings of Foucault are briefly engaged in order to emphasise some important differences between their accounts and that of Foucault, as well as elucidating some crucial aspects of Foucault’s approach.

Foucault considered biopolitics in a wider framework of governmentality, and his account of governmentality can primarily be found in Security, Territory, Population and The Birth of Biopolitics. He did not use the term governmentality consistently and it appears to have several different meanings (e.g. Walters, 2012). Here, an important part of the discussion is focused on Foucault’s account of liberal and neoliberal governmentalities as specific rationalities of governing.

The third section of the chapter is devoted to an exploration of the ways in which Foucault’s theorising on biopolitics and governmentality has been used for studying the international (global) domain. The purpose of this exercise is three-fold: first, to provide an overview and critically engage with a broad range of studies; second, to identify important substantive insights of relevance; and, third, to establish the most productive ways of operationalising Foucault’s theorising with respect to international concerns. A critical overview of the international biopolitics and governmentality studies provides evidence in support of the contention that Foucault-inspired investigations have been boundary-expanding, in both methodological and empirical terms (e.g. Richmond, 2010; also Pasha, 2010; Walters, 2012; Death, 2013; Zanotti, 2013). On the basis of this, I argue in favour of simultaneously applying the two strands of Foucault’s theorising, and positioning them within his broader thinking on power, as well as in favour of empirical investigations.

Foucault on biopower and biopolitics

In The History of Sexuality, Foucault famously argued that, since the classical age, power has undergone a profound transformation, where ‘the right to take life or let live’ was replaced by the right ‘to foster life or disallow it to the point of death’ (Foucault, 1998: 138). In other words, the sovereign power, capable of inflicting death, was replaced by a new power, taking care over life, with death becoming its limit. Equally important was his clarification, made in Society Must Be Defended, that it is not that

sovereignty’s old right – to take life or let live – was replaced, but it came to be complemented by a new right which does not erase the old right but which does penetrate it, permeate it. … It is the power to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die.

(Foucault, 2003: 241)

This clarification means that sovereignty was not replaced by biopower, nor did the right to kill disappear, having been replaced by the right to make live. Biopower evolved in two basic forms: discipline, centred on the individual body as a machine, associated with the emergence of such institutions as medicine, education, and punishment; and control, focused on the population (birth, morbidity and mortality rates, life expectancy and longevity, etc.) (Foucault, 1998). Importantly, ‘unlike discipline, which is addressed to bodies, the new nondisciplinary power is applied … to man-as-living-being; [and] ultimately, … to man-as-species’ (Foucault, 2003: 242). Unlike discipline, or anatomo-politics of the human body, which is individualising, biopolitics is massifying (Foucault, 2003: 243). Again, it is important to emphasise that, although it developed at a later stage, biopolitics did not replace discipline, and both remained intimately linked, being ‘the two poles around which the organisation of power over life was deployed’ (Foucault, 1998: 139).

The main differences between discipline and biopolitics are in the level and scale of operation, as well as in the mechanisms deployed (Foucault, 2003: 242). The concept of population is key to understanding biopolitics as a specific technology of power. According to Dean (1999), three main elements of the concept of population should be considered. The first has to do with a different concept of the governed, as we are not talking about ‘subjects bound in territory who are obliged to submit to their sovereign’, but rather of the ‘members of population’ (Dean, 1999: 107; see also Foucault, 2008 c: 161). Indeed, Foucault stressed that, with biopolitics, there was a move away from understanding humans as humankind to understanding them as human-species (Foucault, 2007: 75). The second characteristic of a population is that it represents an entity defined in its relation to processes which can be known; for instance, a birth rate, a life-expectancy or a mortality rate (Foucault, 2008 c). Indeed, according to Blencowe (2012: 4), ‘the “bio” of “biopolitics” … refers to “trans-organic” serial phenomena that take place at the level of the population’. The knowledge of the population is derived from techniques of observation, including statistics, and numerous institutions utilise this knowledge with a view to regulating a population. In other words, biopolitics accesses the population through calculative techniques that make visible regularities that can only exist at the level of population. Finally, given that a population is a collective entity, the knowledge of it is ‘irreducible to the knowledge that any of its members have of themselves’ (Dean, 1999: 107) and also irreducible to the knowledge about each of its members. As Lemke (2007: 4) explains:

Foucault’s concept of biopolitics assumes the dissociation and abstraction of life from its concrete physical bearers. … This procedure makes it possible to define norms, establish standards, and determine average values. As a result ‘life’ has become an independent, objective and measurable factor and a collective reality.

It follows, he suggests, that biopolitics is reliant on the knowledges generated by such disciplines as biology, demography and epidemiology, which make analysis of life processes, and therefore, governing, possible. In this respect, Dillon (2005: 38) stressed that Foucault’s account of biopolitics is ‘historico-epistemological’, for which ‘a complex epistemological transformation in the interpretation and scientific study of life’ is of crucial importance. Drawing on Foucault but moving beyond him, Dillon also alerted us to the flexible, adaptable and constantly changing nature of biopolitics, as it follows changes and adaptations of populations, as well as changes in life sciences (Dillon, 2005, 2008; Dillon and Lobo-Guerrero, 2008).

Importantly, mechanisms of biopolitics, unlike those of discipline, are not aimed at modifying individuals, but rather at establishing equilibrium, maintaining an average and compensating for variations at the level of population. These are security mechanisms ‘installed around the random element inherent in a population of living beings so as to optimise a state of life’ (Foucault, 2003: 246). When elaborating the differences between disciplinary mechanisms and those of security, Foucault suggested that, first, while ‘[d]iscipline is essentially centripetal’ in that it ‘concentrates, focuses, and encloses’, ‘security apparatuses … are centrifugal’ in that they constantly expand and integrate new elements. Second, while ‘discipline … regulates everything’ and ‘allows nothing to escape’, ‘security … lets things happen’ (Foucault, 2007: 44–45). Finally, like legal systems, discipline operates through permission and prohibition, but it focuses on prescribing what must be done at every moment. Security, on the other hand, tries to grasp things in their ‘naturalness’, in their effective reality and make them function (Foucault, 2007: 44–47). While sovereignty relies on law for its institution, both discipline and biopolitics are reliant on norms. However, these norms are established and function in a different way: with discipline, a norm is a given, a starting point, while with biopolitics the norm emerges as an ‘interplay of different normalities’ (Foucault, 2007: 63), which is at the heart of the process of normalisation. The power acting through the norm is an administrative power, that of ‘the experts and interpreters of life’ (Foucault, in Ojakangas, 2005: 17), and it is this power that will be shown to characterise the ‘new’ humanitarianism as a regime of governing.

For Foucault, the ‘reality’ or ‘naturalness’ of the population suggests that it ‘is not a datum’, but rather ‘it is dependent on a series of variables’ (Foucault, 2007: 70), produced through complex interactions with its milieu. The notion of milieu came to biology via physics and accounted for ‘action at a distance’, that is ‘the medium of an action and the element in which it circulates’ (Foucault, 2007: 20–21). As such, the milieu combines both natural and artificial givens to produce effects on those living in it. The significance of this notion³ has to do with the appreciation that ‘life is not a given but depends on conditions of existence within and beyond life processes’ (Lemke, 2014: 11), as well as with the fact that security mechanisms make milieu their focal point of application by establishing ‘a hold on things that seem far removed from the population, but which, through calculation, analysis, and reflection, … can really have an effect on it’ (Foucault, 2007: 72). This points to the ability of security mechanisms to govern indirectly and at a distance. Given that natural processes require a degree of freedom in order to function, freedom of circulation is indispensable for security. Security requires freedom to operate, and, therefore – one of the most provocative of Foucault’s ideas – ‘freedom is nothing else but the correlative of the deployment of apparatuses of security’ (Foucault, 2007: 48). Consequently, ‘the security pro...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 ‘Working with Foucault after Foucault’: biopolitics, governmentality and the international
• 2 ‘New’ humanitarianism as a regime of governing: context, agendas, actors and technologies
• 3 ‘Caring’ for the population of Afghanistan: the biopolitics of aid securitisation and militarisation
• 4 ‘Caring’ for the population of Belarus: problematisations that matter and Chernobyl’s ‘ghosts’
• Conclusions
• Index