Foucault's Theories Of Racism

Foucault claims that the state is at the centre of modern racism, believing other conceptions of racism are more suited to earlier eras. According to Foucault, modern states exercise their power by administrating life; in contrast to previous centuries, these states are preoccupied with life itself, rather than death. In Society Must Be Defended, Foucault attributes the term ‘biopower’ to this idea, meaning states now have the “the right to ‘make’ live and to ‘let’ die.” It is in opposition with the old ‘sovereign power’ which arose in the Middle Ages and manifested its power by administrating death, exercising its right of life only by exercising its right to kill, or by refraining from killing.” However, despite wanting to show that modern society has moved away from sovereign power, he is forced to return to it in order to address how killing on a massive scale (e.g. Nazi Germany) is still possible in a society dominated by technologies of biopower. He …show more content…
Foucault’s definition of ‘biological racismʼ can be interpreted more loosely in order to encompass an explanation of states’ ability to kill under biopower in more recent years. It is not necessary for state racism to be rooted in explicitly biological terms to be biologically racist—there just needs to be an understanding that the population is threatened by internal and external agents which need to be eliminated. Although Foucault uses the term “racism”, this concept is not necessarily founded in literal race; instead, Foucaultʼs ‘race’ is based on centuries where race did not have much to do with actual physical appearance. For example, in the Middle Ages the main form of racism was actually religious, in which Christians saw Muslims as the racial ‘others’. The words ‘nationʼ and ‘raceʼ were once used synonymously, and it is in this sense that the division between the population and ‘other’ is called ‘state