Michel Foucault's The Birth Of Biopolitics

“A world where no man will hold desire for himself, but will direct his efforts to satisfy the desires of his neighbor who’ll have no desires but to satisfy the desires of the next neighbor who’ll have no desires - and so on…”(The Soul of a Collectivist) The speech focuses on how one snuffs out the individual desires of man and makes him work for the collective body of he and his neighbors. To form a collectivist society personal desire must seem as though it is a selfish sin, nobody can be great because “Great men can’t be ruled”(The Soul of a Collectivist), and singular thought can not be

An example of how he implicated this ideology is shown by who, in the factory, has ultimate power to who has none. This hierarchy starts with the owners, then management, and lastly, the disposable workers. We can see something relatable to this in a jungle, a food chain. A lion has more power and influence over a hyena, who has more power than a rabbit. Another example of this predator and prey mindset is shown by the following quote: “He had not told them, simply because he had supposed they would understand that they had to pay interest upon their debt, as a matter of course.”

A Rhetorical Analysis of William Graham Sumner William Graham Sumner had a great influence on Social Darwinism in the nineteenth century. Sumner was a Sociology professor at Yale University, who adopted the idea of Social Darwinism because of his belief in the survival of the fittest. Even though he did not fully commit to Social Darwinism, he did promote the idea of the constant struggle against nature. He explains that in order for survival, one needs to struggle and compete with nature to provide our basic human needs of food and water. During the Gilded Age, businessmen and the middle class men supported the theory of Social Darwinism which was first introduced by the pioneers of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.

America’s economic system and practice of meritocracy drive these societal advancements. Capitalism rewards hard work and punishes laziness or the inability to work. Whether or not this system is fair, it has inspired individuals to innovate and instill a sense of competition throughout America for centuries. In his Why the Americans are so Restless in the Midst of their Prosperity, Alexis de Tocqueville claims, “However democratic, then, the social state and the political constitution of a people may be, it is certain that every member of the community will always find out several points about him which overlook his own position; and we may foresee that his looks will be doggedly fixed in that direction” (Tocqueville). Tocqueville criticizes the uneasiness that Americans consistently possess with their place in society.

The French Revolution established abstract universalistic principles based on a responsibility to human rights, while the Americans preferred to focus on immediate problem-solving and rights (to land they took from the natives.) The French are more conservative in this sense, since the decisions they take are still informed by a single common vision for the long-term good. While France’s focus has not changed, America’s destiny is now shaped by anonymous market forces, public relations specialists, lobbyists, investors, a vastly richer, more influential corporate overclass directly implicated in politics,

Similar to other dystopian novels such as George Orwell’s 1984, Ayn Rand’s Anthem paints a grim picture of a collectivist world fraught with terror and oppression. Yet Rand’s vision stands in stark contrast to those that shape most portrayals of dystopias that boast technological and scientific prowess. Technology in 1984 is sophisticated and used to enforce thought control over the masses. This chronology is reversed in Anthem, where prohibition of free thinking creates a medieval, technologically backward society. Inversely, independent thought and action set the conditions for scientific and technological development, ultimately revealing the nature of science.

His second purpose in writing this is to defend the strategies of nonviolent resistance. This is shown when he

Technology is advancing very rapidly, but is it hurting or harming us? In the article, “ Is Google Making Us Stupid”, by Nicholas Carr, he examines how the internet has altered people’s mental abilities. Malcolm Gladwell writes an article called, “ Small Change”, in which he draws attention to how the internet has changed the engagement of social activism. Carr’s argument that the internet alters a person's mental abilities, changes their thought process, and destroys their concentration complicates Gladwell’s point that the internet loses the meaning of social activism, changes how activist are defined, and it takes over activism on a social level, because the arguments presented are similar but the outcomes of the internet vary between the

In the essay “A Balance Between Nature and Nurture,” Gloria Steinem gives the audience an insight into her beliefs on this controversial topic. Gloria has a belief that both nature and nurture impact us throughout our lives. In her article she writes about how her parents thought that traveling was just as “enlightening as sitting in a classroom.” Beside her parents, Gloria saw the world through a different perspective compared to other kids her age. However, once she got to school things changed- she was exposed to gender obsessions, race and class complexities, and the idea that war and male leadership were part of human nature.

Carmichael’s intentions were to improve the pitfalls of the way liberals thought. Compared to past doctrines that we have read, The Pitfalls of Liberalism has been the only one that tries to awaken citizens to the subconscious state that they were put through by Western thoughts and to polarization through the information given in articles and speeches (239). Carmichael also brought up the fact that a catalyst does not solely create an outcome, but that the conditions are already in us and how

In the past six centuries humans have become more reliant on technology to take over the simplistic jobs to create a more efficient and widely connected world. The shift from the age of industry and production to media and information culture has raised the question of what it means to be human. Industrial jobs have been taken over by computers and society looks to humans to fill jobs that are a provision of service. William Gibson’s Neuromancer, is a blueprint of how the human reality in the postindustrial and neoliberal ages is dominated by technology. Overall, the novel shows that humans depend on technology to feel interconnected, human identity is found through the fixation on technology, and that human life revolves around business.

In Aldous Huxley’s book, Brave New World, an unimaginable dystopia has been created. The World State was formed on three principles: community, identity, and stability. These three principles dictate how members of this society live and interact with one another. In modern society, there is an emphasis on the importance of motherhood, commitment, and countless other ideals that are rejected in the World State. Throughout the novel, the principle of community is shown with castes and hypnopaedic slogans, such as everybody belongs to everybody else.

The people’s supply and demand needs are all controlled and maintained by the state. This conditioning creates the complete reliance on the state, and allows the state to control how a person perceives the world and themselves, their social role in life, and ultimately any sense of a higher being. Not only does conditioning eliminate the concept of individual identity, but it also distorts the person’s view of the natural world. The state is driven by science and technology, but it is also the conditioned hate against nature that defines life in the World State. In the text, nature and consumerism are consistently expressed in conflict with one another.

BOOK REVIEW: THE BIRTH OF THE CLINIC – ARCHAEOLOGY OF MEDICAL PERCEPTION, BY MICHEL FOUCAULT Name of the Book: The Birth of the Clinic - Archaeology of Medical Perception, London: Routledge Author: Michel Foucault, (Translated by A. M. Sheridan) Year of Publication: 1973 (French version published in 1963) INTRODUCTION "This book is about space, about language, and about death; it is about the act of seeing, the gaze."

The two critical theories studied this week, new historicism and cultural criticism, share many of the same concepts. Both theories are under the belief that history and culture are complex and that there is no way for us to fully understand these subjects because we are influenced by our subjective beliefs. Also, both theories believe that people are restricted by the limits society sets, and that people and these limits cause friction and struggle. Furthermore, both of these theories share from some of the same influences such as from the French philosopher Michel Foucault. New historicist believe that the writing of history is merely an interpretation, not an absolute fact, other than the big facts we know such as who was president at the time or who won a certain battle.