A short essay on Biopolitics and Sovereignty

Assignment #2
Rukmini (rukminc@gmail.com)

Course: Biopolitics

Sovereignty originally is a final and absolute authority in the

political community and no absolute authority exists elsewhere i
The above quote coming from a conventional Political Science text book,
if seen uncritically gives a pretty functional definition of the term. Yet the
terms political community or authority comes as an automatic pregiven. The category as a consequence
emerges as a supra-historical
term
which fails to analyze power within the concrete and historical
framework of its operation. It is this play of ahistorical categories in the
conventional narratives that Foucault was writing against throughout his
genealogical phase.
Iii
Genealogy is gray, meticulous, and patiently documentary. It operates
on a field of entangled and confused parchments, on documents that
have been scratched over and recopied many timesiii
At the very outset, In his Society must be defended (lectures given at
the Collge de France in 19756), Foucault analyzed the juridical theory
of sovereignty in early modern political theory as having three
cycles:The first cycle he identified was a subject to subject cycle in
which the relationship and arrangements within a state and society is
depicted. The second cycle remains the power and powers cycle
depicting multiplicity of powers emanating from a single site. Lastly, the
third cycle constituting sovereign power and law as an apriori source of
legitimacy. Against these originary myths iv what Foucault begins in his
analysis is an examination of the relations of domination v. By treating
Power not as a juridical entity but as a relationship what Foucault
intended was an examination of how the modern day subject came into
being ie its Genealogy. Through his meticulously empirical study, what
Foucault registered was that a palpable shift was afflicting the older
model of sovereignty throughout Early modern Europe.
Since the European Middle Ages, Foucault maintained how
the
supreme instrument of sovereign power was law. Medieval and early
modern juridical theory centred on the King: his attendants, possible

limits to his power and his protection. The monarch symbolized the
living body of sovereignty and law was the expression of the centers
will. Yet, from 16th c onwards, Foucault discovered how the idea of the
art of government separate from body of the King was coming into
existence. Analyzing the sixteenth-century anti-Machiavellian literature
especially La Perreires narrative,vi Foucault showed how the importance
of these commentaries lay in fashioning a governmental rationality
separated from the interest of the Prince and concentrating on
population as its main focus. Simultaneously, a discourse of Rights was
consistently attacking the archaic feudal privileges inherited from the
middle ages. Instead of a totalizing discourse, what according to Foucault
was emerging in European Political scene was a perspectival discourse.
This discursive move was occurring at a time, when the
material
relations of
Feudal society were slowly disintegrating. The growth of
markets, a mobile emancipated serf and cities as centres of governance
was coming into existence. In the cities, further markets as autonomous
sites
of redistribution and verediction was forming beyond the
obsessive control of a predominantly agrarian feudal society. Faced with
these myriad new social forces, the sovereign power was slowly
becoming incapable of governing these new sites through the familial
model of governance. A new art of governance was needed. Formulated
on the eve of Industrial revolution and demographic upsurge in Europe,
the project of Biopower, precisely fills this gap and takes into account
factors that mere display of sword or brute force fails to take into
considerationvii.
As Foucault understood it, the term designates what. brought life and its
mechanisms into the realm of explicit calculations and made knowledgepower an agent of transformation of human life viii.While the sovereign
power thrived on a right to kill;, bio-power aimed to create productive
citizens out of subjectsix. As human life, itself became a new object of
investment, the sovereigns right to take lives became qualified x. In his
text Society must be defendedxi, Foucault recognises two dimensions of
this power to life. One of them was the disciplinary techniques
surrounding the body. Through enclosed spaces or institutions such as
prison,schools or even hospitals, the disciplinary power strove to reach
an optimal use of human bodily capabilities. This
disciplinary power,
which tends to increase the utilitarian force of the individual body and
seek docility in Foucaults terminology emerge as Anatomopolitics. The
second moment, focusing on
species body,emerges as Biopolitics.
Spatial distribution of individual bodies, their separation, serialization or
discerning broad trends of birth or death became the object of this new
regime of power. Instead of treating death as a routine entity in a human

life, preservation of lives and their optimal use remained the hallmark of
this new model of governance. Consequently, instead of a single site of
governance what emerged in the nineteenth century was a model
consisting of multiplicity of relations of force and operations of power.
What, according to Foucault this network of sites facilitated was a
redefinition of power. The governmental regime was bound up with the
old sovereign power but was distinct from it. Foucault, giving a
diagrammatic form argues how the new regime of Governmentality
consisted of three powers sovereignty, governance and discipline with
the recommendation that they be analyzed as coexisting and interactive
with each other.
Secondly, while the old sovereign power was a dead weight extraneous to
society. The Biopolitical regime of governance percolated every life
process. Lastly, the modern Biopolitical regime in tandem with the
language of rights intended to provide a free playing field. But it also
controlled and delimited the field. As Foucault in his Security,territory
Population argues..the Biopolitical regime intended to create a
spontaneous but a regulated play of desire xii. In conclusion, it can be
argued that what Foucault essentially did through his genealogical
studies was a displacement of the concept of sovereignty. Sovereignty
emerges as an empty, residual category in his text, only to be qualified
by its interactions with governmentality.
II
Theorist Giorgio Agamben, however thinks otherwise. In order to
facilitate a return of the sovereign power in Foucaults Biopolitics,
Agambens central analytical category is the state of exception.
Whereas, for Foucault, bio-power replaces sovereign power as the
dominant modality of power from the 20th century onwards, in
Agambens text the production of a biopolitical body is part and parcel of
the original activity of sovereign powerxiii.According to Agambens
account ,Homo Sacer, the first move of classical
politics was the
separation of the biological from the political. The natural life or zoe,
was excluded from the polis, while Bios, the figure adorned with rights
and politics, emerged as a qualified life. Who facilitates a distinction
between Zoe and Bios? Here Sovereign powers role becomes most
crucial.
Adopting Schmitts central thesis that it is the sovereign who decides on
the exception, Agamben argues how it is the sovereign power which
decides when and where the law is applicable and where it should be
suspended. However suspension of law is not a simple question of
exclusion as what is excluded, is also included within the ambit of law.
Agamben demonstrates that by investigating sovereign powers

paradoxical relationship with law. The legal exceptionby its very

definition is beyond the scope of ordinary law. It is only through the
sovereign discretion and suspension of traditional rule of law that the
sovereign is able to transcend traditional juridical boundaries; and
consequently exists beyond
law. Yet, as it is the sovereign who
determines the ambit and application of law, his demarcation of the zone
of laws action remain central. As Agamben states, what is at issue in
the sovereign exception is not so much the control or neutralization of an
excess as the creation and definition of the very space in which the
juridico-political order can have validity. xiv The sovereign thus operates
as the threshold of order and exception, determining the purview of the
law. Importantly here, Agamben notes that although the exception may
be defined by its exteriority to the rule of law, yet it has a juridical
reference in the form of its suspension. As Agamben himself insists, the
rule applies to the exception in no longer applying, in withdrawing from
it the particular force of law consists in this capacity of law to maintain
itself in relation to an exteriority xv.This inclusive-exclusion mechanism
implicit within the structure of exception, coheres directly with his
conceptualisation of the subjects relation to the law within a state of
exception. Crucially the form of life captured within the
inclusive/exclusion of the sovereign determination is bare life or life
that is devoid of legal protection yet
constantly exposed to the
sovereigns right to death and force of law. To elucidate his conception
of bare life, Agamben resurrects a Roman scriptural figure called Homo
Sacer, who, in accordance with Archaic Roman law, is one who may be
killed without legal redress and yet not sacrificed.xvi
Throughout history, Agamben shows how
rampant the extension of
xvii
executive to the judicial has been. Yet it is in the death camps that
Agamben finds the height of Sovereign suspension where a biopolitical
exception is given a permanent and concrete physical basis. Instead of a
temporary suspension,the permanent spatial manifestation of a state of
exception in form of the death camp, according to Agamben has made
state of exception a norm. As Agamben argues under the modern state ,
the Biopolitical regime makes the sovereign all powerful and all men
potential homo sacers. The elaborate scientific apparatuses
constructed to kill, the nameless body of the Mussalman, or the
incapability of the camp survivors to express their legal testimony in
language , according to Agamben shows how at the heart of the
Biopolitical Project, sovereignty still pulls the string.

III
Throughout Agambens text, Foucault remains an almost absent
yet ever present reference point. This section will try to weave the two
thinkers in a conversation, favouring Foucaults approach over
Agambens. Agamben,himself calls his project an attempt to complete
the Foucaultian description of Biopoliticsxviii. However he takes life and
law almost as coinciding puppet-like categories, resting on sovereigns
discretionary power. Each of these categories however is not ahistorical.
Agembens notion of a continuity of Bio-political life from antiquity till
modernity is
extremely homogenizing. Whereas Foucaults discourse
precisely tries to show how Life as an object of power is an invention of
modernityxix. Foucault is well aware of the distinction between Zoe and
Bios. In his studies on Racism in Society Must be defended, he depicts
how racism introduces a break between what must live and what must
die.But Foucault does not see racism as a mere elaboration of sovereign
power. Rather he depicts it in Biopolitical terms, where death of one race
makes the life of another race healthier. The Nazi states meticulous
management of the Volk thus sees its double in the horrors of Treblinka
and Auschwitz .Much like Agamben, Foucault also fragments the Biopolitical field. But unlike Agambens collapse of the two categories Zoe
and Bios , Foucault gives a much more nuanced point of view.
Much similar to Agambens deployment of the term life, law as a
category also has been denied any special autonomous status in
Agambens narrative. But can one really reduce legal determination to
sovereign will alone? In this context, I think Ben Golder and Peter
Fitzpatricks reading of Foucaults law remain instructive xx.The authors
see, law not as a blunt tool in sovereigns hand nor as a pliable instrument
of disciplinary power. Law in Foucaults texts, they feel has two functions.
On one hand law becomes an appendage to disciplinary power by acting
as an anchor ,a restraint or at best a jurisdictional ruse by masking the
excesses of disciplinary powerxxi.But following Foucault, the authors also
argue how laws suspension is never totalxxii. They show how Law
inhibits a liminal zone between Public sovereignty and polymorphic
techniques of disciplinary power. Law in the words of Fitzpatrick
instead of acting as a source of certitude alone often almost by its
nature responds to the infinite relations which impinge on its
delimited domain of application . Within this framework of law being
an ever responsive entity
at-least I think question of complete
abandonment can never emerge. Instead law would also work as an
autonomous as well as ceaseless modifier, affecting the frontiers of
exclusionary practices.

Last but not the least; can one really treat Sovereignty as a
transcendental category? This question, I would like to address through
a very simplistic and a partial reading of Jacques Derrida. In his essay
The Reason of the Strongest, in the book called Rogues, Derrida while
discussing United Nations, argued how modern politics combines two
principles of Western political thought: sovereignty and democracy xxiii.
But, democracy and sovereignty are at the same time, but also by turns,
inseparable and in contradiction with one another xxiv.Democracy and
Sovereignty however contradict each other in many ways. While
Sovereignty, always tries to be in its pure form (ie assuming an
untrammelled,unchallenged power) ,democracy calls for the sovereign to
share power and to give reasons for its actions. Further,in modern day
polities, sovereignty as a category is said to be constituted or shared by
all members of a democratic state. Thus simplistically speaking the
contest between Bios and the sovereign often makes sovereignty acting
in a domain of perpetual deferral. My second application of Derrida
comes from his book The Beast and the sovereignxxv. The Beast and the
Sovereign contains a series of deconstructive readings of classical
thinkers such Aristotle, La Fontaine, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau and
Schmitt and their ideas on sovereignty. One of the central themes is how
sovereigns and beasts form a figural pair, consistently overlapping each
other. Agamben also cites Hobbes in explaining how the primordial state
of nature lives within the sovereign. But in Derridas text, the overlaps
are spectral and partial . If the shadow of the beast is scattered
throughout body-politic, than there cannot be one margin but multiple
suspension pointsxxvi , forms of partitions , plaguing
sovereignties
imagined indivisibility. Derrida in his Beast and the Sovereign asks a
question,
Why is political sovereignty, the sovereign or the Slate or the people,
figured sometimes as what rises, through the law of reason. above the
beast, above the natural life of the animal. and sometimes (or
simultaneously) as the manifestation of bestiality or human animality. i.e.
human naturalityxxvii.
Agambens juridical explanation of Sovereignty according to me, cannot
provide an answer to it.
Excluding end notes:2550
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hinsley, F. H. Sovereignty. New York. Watts. 1966

Michel Foucaults 1971 essay, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, reproduced in Paul Rabinow,
Paul. The Foucault Reader Pantheon Books, New York : 1984
Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality Volume 1, New York: Vintage Books, 1979 , 135 - 159.
Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: lectures at the Collge de France, 1974 1975,
(Lectures 3, 8 and 11), New York: Picador, 2003, pp. 43 64, 167 188 & 239 264.
Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: lectures at the Collge de France, 1977
1978, (Lectures 3, 4 and 5), New York: Picador, 2007, pp. 55-134.
Foucault: Birth of Biopolitics: lectures at the Collge de France, 1978 - 1979 (Lectures 1
3), New York: Picador, 2009, pp. 1 74.
Lemke, Thomas. Biopolitics : an advanced introduction translated by Eric Frederick Trump
New York University Press New York 2011 pp60-80
Katia Genel (2006): The Question of Biopower: Foucault and Agamben, Rethinking
Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, 18:1, 43-62
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacre: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), Introduction, pp. 9-14 and Part One: The
Logic of Sovereignty, pp. 15-43.
Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago and London: University
of Chicago Press, 2005), Chapter 1: The State of Exception as a Paradigm of Government,
pp. 1-31.
Ben Golder and Peter Fitzpatrick: Foucaults Other Law in Foucaults Law, New York &
London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 53 98.
Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, Stanford, California: Stanford University
Press, 2005 (French 2003), 95-114
Jacques Derrida,The beast and the sovereign . Chicago
session 1-32.

University Press. (2009). First

i Hinsley, F. H. (1966). Sovereignty. Page 26

ii The section on Foucault has been drawn from many of his works including Society Must Be

Defended: lectures at the Collge de France, 1974 1975, Michel Foucault, Security, Territory,
Population: lectures at the Collge de France, 1977 1978, (Lectures 3, 4 and 5) and Birth of
Biopolitics: lectures at the Collge de France, 1978 - 1979 (Lectures 1 3).The texts have not been
treated chronologically and has been accommodated in an eclectic manner.
Michel Foucaults 1971 essay, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, reproduced in Rabinow (1984),
pp.76.
iii

Michel Foucaults 1971 essay, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, is a good methodological entry
point. Foucault argues how Ursprung :origin as such constitutes conventional Historys object and
is a moot point around which the teleological sequence of history is weaved . Instead of a
conventional historical approach which is characterized by its search for essential origins: Foucault,
in his genealogies speaks of various originary momentsand their functionalities. While narrating
this story of multiple origins, however Foucault is conscious not to recover identities or essences ,
but rather what he intends to do is to write a presentist or an affective history where each stable
identity will be vivisected and seen as a repository of multifarious traces of social power.
iv

v Foucault feels that mere juridical treatment of sovereignty is not adequate to investigate what he

calls relations of domination. Juridical model according to Foucault only takes into account
category of repression or prohibition. But an approach which sees Power in a network can take into
account creative possibilities of power as well.

vi Michel Foucault,Security, Territory, Population: lectures at the Collge de France, 1977 1978
vii The assymetrical right of death,exercised by the sovereign and right of seizurethus in

Foucaults view,gradually leads to a situation of minute control: right of the sword,remains no

longer principal form of power but simply one element among others. In short, Power instead od
acting as a subtracter becomes a multiplier.
viii Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality Volume 1, New York: Vintage Books, 1979, 143.
ix Though in this assignment, due to paucity of space, the transition has been shown in an almost

linear fashion, Foucault himself writes how this transition is discountinuous. The new political
forces from 16th to late 18th c according to Foucault were engaged in a tortuous battle with sovereign
prerogatives and control.
x For example, a division between (Division between productive bodies and unproductive bodies to

exercise its right to kill.

xi Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: lectures at the Collge de France, 1974 1975,

(Lectures 3, and 11),2003.

xii Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: lectures at the Collge de France, 1977

1978,pp-73.
xiii Giorgio Agamben, 1998 Homo Sacre: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-

Roazen, pp-6
xiv Ibid. Introduction.
xv Ibid.
xvi Homo sacer, the archetypal figure becomes the repository of two forms of exception.
Firstly he is he is excluded from human law (killing him does not count as murder ) and he is
excluded from divine law (killing him is not a ritual killing ).This double exclusion in Agambens
narrative also counts as a double inclusion: inclusion with God in the form of unsacrificability
and is included in the community in the form of being able to be killed.

xvii In Usa, he sees the spectre of Sovereign Ban in the form of Patriot Act during Civil war. While

in France, the revolutionary tribunals law of suspects become his example. Giorgio Agamben, State
of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), Chapter
1
xviii Katia Genel (2006): The Question of Biopower: Foucault and Agamben, Rethinking Marxism:

A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, 18:1, 43-62

xix Lemke, Thomas. Biopolitics : an advanced introduction / Thomas Lemke ; translated by Eric

Frederick Trump pp68-80

Ben Golder and Peter Fitzpatrick: Foucaults Other Law in Foucaults Law,: Routledge, 2009,
pp. 53 98.
xx

xxi According to Fitzpatrick , knowledge especially disciplinary knowledge in modern societies

lack a transcendent reference point.As a consequence it always remain incomplete. What law,
essentially does here is to act as a compensatory justifier to complete the epistemological project.
Ibid.
xxii Ibid.pp58

xxiii

Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, Stanford University Press, (2005) 95-114

xxiv Ibid.pp 100.

Jacques Derrida,The beast and the sovereign . Chicago University Press. (2009). First session
1-32.
xxv

xxvi Anirban Das, Class Lectures.

xxviiJacques

Derrida,The beast and the sovereign . Chicago University Press. (2009). First session
1-32. The ebook version has all jumbled up page numbers hence I am not giving the exact page
number.