Political technology of the body

Historians started writing about the body as a biological system in the field of demography and pathology.  How it behave or react in when attached with germs or viruses; effect of externals on its physiology and metabolism; on the biological aspects on which the existence is based upon. But the body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs. This political investment of the body is in accordance with complex reciprocal relations, with its economic use. Its constitution as labour power is possible only if it is caught up in a system of subjection (in which need is also a political instrument meticulously prepared, calculated and used); the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body.
 

This subjection is not only obtained by the instruments of violence or ideology; it can also be direct, physical, setting force against force and yet without involving violence it may be calculated, organized, technically thought out; it may be subtle, make use neither of weapons nor of terror and yet remain of a physical order. That is to say, there may be a 'knowledge' of the body that is not exactly the science of its functioning, and a mastery of its forces that is more than the ability to conquer them: this knowledge and this mastery constitute what might be called the Political Technology of the body.

 

Of course, this technology is diffuse, rarely formulated in continuous, systematic discourse; it is often made up of bits and pieces; it implements a disparate set of tools or methods. In spite of the coherence of its results, it is generally no more than a multiform instrumentation. Moreover, it cannot be localized in a particular type of institution or state apparatus. For they have recourse to it; they use, select or impose certain of its methods. But, in its mechanisms and its effects, it is situated at a quite different level. What the apparatuses and institutions operate is, in a sense, a micro-physics of power, whose field of validity is situated in a sense between these great functionings and the bodies themselves with their materiality and their forces.

 

Now, the study of this micro-physics presupposes that the power exercised on the body is conceived not as a property, but as a strategy, that its effects of domination are attributed not to 'appropriation', but to dispositions, maneuvers, tactics, techniques, functionings; that one should decipher in it a network of relations, constantly in tension, in activity, rather than a privilege that one might possess that one should take as its model a perpetual battle rather than a contract regulating a transaction or the conquest of a territory. In short this power is exercised rather than possessed; it is not the 'privilege', acquired or preserved, of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions - an effect that is manifested and sometimes extended by the position of those who are dominated.

 

Knowingly or unknowingly every body try to practice this knowledge to survive in this system which civilization has given to us. Be it is of our children or it is of our own, it is normal to use the body as a resource.  We are selling these bodies of ours in this big market which drives the economy. This is a general rule accepted as a natural law of our times, which is not older than 5-7 thousand years. This self-governing law of our times is regulating the system with a balance and shifts the powers from one unit to the new one, when the previous one completes and falls. This is applicable to Governments, Institutions and economy systems.

 

With the knowledge and prevalent practice of this Political Technology the scarcity of necessities are first being created and then the same bodies are being exploited. These Covid times are the perfect examples where on one hand there are victims of virus or business loss and on the other hand are the opportunists who are directly or indirectly exploiting the first ones. But it is good to see people coming out for help directly breaking these cob webs of ill practices of the systems of unsocial regime.