Genealogy of biopower

Abstract

The objective of the present paper is to trace the elements, the questions and problematizations that rendered possible to Foucault the elaboration of the concepts of biopower, biopolitics, governmentality and security. In this work we intend to investigate the genealogy of biopower and biopolitics, seeking to retrace in Foucault's reflections around the medicalization of society and the extension of medical power - in the period 1974-1976, especially in the lectures at UERJ - the questioning that prepared the emergence of the notions of biopower and biopolitics, as proposed by him in 1976. We can suppose that the articulation made by Foucault between the medicalization of society and the government of life was one of the conditions that rendered possible the emergence of the hypothesis of biopower.