Biopolitics names the governmental technology characteristic of disciplinary society that targets biological processes at the population level. Foucault identified this as the power to “make live and let die,” contrasting it with sovereign power’s capacity to “take life or let live.”
Biopolitics operates through statistical knowledge of birth rates, mortality, health patterns and life expectancy. It aims to optimise population health and productivity through medical intervention, public health measures and demographic management.
The concept proves essential for understanding modern power but requires supplementation. Psychopolitics marks the mutation from managing biological populations to exploiting individual consciousness and subjective capacities under neoliberalism.
Related: psychopolitics, disciplinary-power, Foucault