Modern Society and Sexuality

Modern Society and Sexuality

• Modern industrial societies have not necessarily led to increased sexual expression
• There has been a visible surge of unorthodox sexualities
• A deployment different from the law has led to the spread of specific pleasures and diverse sexualities through interconnected networks, despite local prohibitions

Power Dynamics

• There are more centers of power than ever before
• Greater attention is being paid and verbalized
• Circular connections and linkages have increased
• There are more locations where the intensity of pleasures and the persistence of power take hold and spread

Power's Hold Over Life in the 19th Century

• The 19th century saw power's increasing control over life
• Power was acquired over people as living beings
• Biology came under state control
• This trend led to what could be called State management of the biological

Classical Theory of Sovereignty

• The classical theory of sovereignty provided the backdrop for analyzing war, races, etc
• The right of life and death was a fundamental attribute of sovereignty
• This right is paradoxical, as it means the sovereign can decide to put people to death or let them live

The Sovereign's Right

• Life and death are not natural phenomena outside of power
• The subject is neither dead nor alive in relation to the sovereign but neutral
• The sovereign grants the subject the right to be alive or possibly to be dead
• The lives and deaths of subjects only become rights through the sovereign's will, is the theoretical paradox

The Paradox of Life and Death

• The right of life and death means the sovereign cannot grant life in same way as death
• The right of life and death is always unbalanced; the balance is tipped towards death
• Sovereign power's effect on life is executed when the sovereign can kill.
• The right to kill is the essence of the right of life and death
• The right over life and death has no symmetry

Political Transformation

• A significant political transformation occurred in the 19th century
• The old right of sovereignty to take life or let live was complemented by a new right
• The new right did not erase the old right but instead penetrated it
• The new right is the power to "make" live and "let" die
• The previous right of sovereignty was the right to take life or let live

Jurists and the Right to Life

• Jurists in the 17th and 18th asking about the right to life and death
• Individuals enter a social contract to form a sovereign to protect lives from threats/need.
• Life is the foundation of the sovereign's power
• Sovereigns cannot demand subjects give them the right to exercise control of life and death
• Life cannot remain outside the contract because its was the reason for the contract

Techniques and Technologies of Power

• Techniques of power emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries centered on the individual body
• All devices ensured spatial distribution of bodies, separation, alignment, serialization, and surveillance
• Organization was made of a whole field of visibility around those individuals
• Techniques could be used for taking control of the body
• Attempts were made to increase the productive force through exercise

Disciplinary Technology

• The disciplinary technology of labor was established in the 17th and 18th centuries.
• Techniques for rationalizing and economizing power with surveillance, hierarchies, inspections, bookkeeping, and reports

Emerging Technology of Power

• The second half of the 18th century saw an emerging technology of power
• This new power technology was not disciplinary
• It integrates, modifies and infiltrates pre-existing disciplinary technqiues
• This new technique does not simply do away with disciplinary technique, it occupies a different level, scale, and bearing area

Non-Disciplinary Power

• Unlike discipline directed at bodies, non-disciplinary focuses on man-as-living-being
• Discipline wants to rule a multiplicity of men that dissolves into individual bodies
• New technology is addressed to multiplicity of men to the extent that form a global mass affected by overall processes
• First seizure of power was over the body in individualizing mode
• A second seizure of power is not individualizing but massifying; directed at man-as-species

Biopolitics

• In the 18th century anatomo-politics of the human body gives way to biopolitics of races
• This new technology of power involves processes like births to deaths ratio, reproduction and fertility of a population, etc
• Demographers begin measuring phenomena like birth control in statistical terms.
• Natalist policy of intervening in phenomena begins at the time

Biopolitics and the Population

• Biopolitics is not only concerned with fertility rate alone.
• Biopolitics also addresses the problem of morbidity, as the level of famous epidemics
• End of the 18th century witnesses a shift to focus on endemics that affect a population
• Illness becomes phenomenon affecting a population
• Death becomes a permanent part of life that diminishes it and weakens it

Public Hygiene

• These phenomena lead to the development of public hygiene
• Institutions are built to coordinate medical care, centralize information, and normalize knowledge
• Campaigns are launched to medicalize the population
• Field of intervention also includes accidents, infirmities, and anomalies
• Establishments such as insurance, individual and collective savings, and safety measures

Biopolitics' Domain

• Control exists over relations between the human race insofar as they inhabit an environment
• Includes effects of the geographical, climatic, or hydrographic
• Problems of swamps, and epidemics linked to them are now relevant
• The environment is not considered natural anymore, that has been created by people
• Defines power's intervention based on birth and morality rates, disabilities and environment

New Elements

• Appearance of a new element emerges of which both theories of right and disciplinary practice knew nothing
• Theories of right only knew the individual and society
• Disciplines deal with individuals and their bodies in practical terms
• New technology of power is not the social body or the body as an individual
• It is a new body, a multiple body, a body with so many heads
• Biopolitics deals with population as a political, scientific, biological, problem of power

Collective Phenomena

• Collective phenomena have economic and political effects, but pertinent only at the mass level
• Phenomena are aleatory and unpredictable when taken in themselves
• They are serial phenomena that occur over time
• Biopolitics addresses aleatory events that occur in a population

Technology of Power and Biopolitics

• Biopolitics introduces mechanisms different than disciplinary approaches
• Mechanisms include forecasts, estimates, and measures.
• Mechanisms intervene at population level
• Mortality rate lowered, life expectancy increased, birth rate is stimulated
• Regulatory mechanisms ensure stability and homeostasis in population with random elements

Disciplinary and Regulatory Mechanisms

• Disciplinary mechanisms maximize and extract forces, but not at a body level
• Not about individuality
• Aim is states of equilibrium
• Its about controlling life by ensuring they are not disciplined, but regularized.
• Sovereignty took life and let live
• New power that consists of life, consists of making live and letting die

Concrete Manifestation

• Gradual disqualification of death is a concrete manifestation
• Public ritualization of death started to disappear in the 18th century
• Death has ceased from occurring in grand ceremony
• Death has become private and shameful
• Death was a transition of power from wordly sovereign to the next world
• Death also meant transmission of power from dying

Decreasing Power

• Transition from decreasing power of right to take life, to increasing power of intervening to make live
• Power now intervenes to improve life
• Death becomes considered the end of power.
• Power has no control of death and manages morality

Regulatory Technology and Disciplinary Technology

• Since the 18th century, 2 technologies superimposed themselves
• One technique is disciplinary focusing on how body produces individualizing effects
• Another is centered on life that tries to predict events. The aim is to establish equilibrium that protects the security of populations from internal dangers

Society's Governing Power

• Power found itself unable to govern society undergoing industrialization and demographic explosion
• Old mechanism was escaping sovereignty
• A first adjustment was made through surveilllance and training the individual body
• Adjustments occur at the local level in institutions such as schools, hospitals, barracks, workshops, etc.
• Second adjustment is made at the end of the 18th century; the mechanisms are adjusted to phenomena of population

Body-Organism

• Two series exist: the body-organism and population-biological processes
• 2 sets do not exist at same level with articulation
• Articulated thru example of model town for both disciplinary and regulatory approaches
• Sexuality is another axis, becoming strategically important in the 19th century

Sexuality

• Sexuality is a corporeal mode of behavior, thus controlled thru surveillance
• Sexuality creates broad effects on biological and unity of the population
• Exists as meeting point for body and population as well as discipline and regularization
• Occupies privileged position that explains emphasis on sexuality in 19th century
• When sexuality is undisciplined, it affects 2 levels of the body
• There are societal effects in terms of heredity and degeneracy of the population

Understanding

• Medicine plays a role in scientific knowledge of biological processes and population, thus having both disciplinary and regulatory effects
• 1 element circulates between disciplinary and regulatory, thus applied to both body and population
• Element is the norm, to be applied to both a body to discipline and a population to normalize
• Normalizing society is not generalized disciplinary society, but a society in which both norms interest
• Power has taken control that lies between the organic and biological, between body and population

The Takeover

• Power has taken taken control between body and life generally with both body and population
• Contradictions appear when biopowers reach to dominate or end it
• Paradoxes apparent by atomic power, which has ability to kill
• This can suppress the guarantee of life itself
• The biopower exists that makes it possible for man make a monster, to build viruses that cannot be controlled

Modern industrial societies haven't necessarily increased sexual expression, but unorthodox sexualities have surged. Power dynamics involve more centers, attention, and connections. The 19th century saw power's control over life and state management of biology.