From Law to Life: Foucault, Sovereignty, and Biopolitical Racism

The chapter argues that Michel Foucault introduces a fundamental rupture from the classical and radical-juridical conceptions of sovereign violence by claiming that it is no longer orientated towards the establishment, preservation, or maintenance of juridical order, but is, first and foremost, orientated towards the regulation of life. In turn, this regulation depends upon the introduction of a division, which, in the 1976 lecture course Society must be Defended, Foucault identifies as a racist one that divides those deemed to be biologically acceptable from those deemed to be unacceptable. Violence is needed to save the former from the alter, with the consequence that Foucault points to a hygiene function for sovereign violence that is fundamentally different to the purpose afforded violence in juridical models.