FROM BIOPOLITICS TO PSYCHOPOLITICS: COMMUNICATION, POWER AND SUBJECTIVITY BY MICHEL FOUCAULT

Abstract

The paper presents a socio-philosophical problematization of the mediatic dimension of our contemporary modes of coexistence that adopts the analytical and critical perspective formulated by Michel Foucault. Firstly, the problematicity of the absence of an in-depth inquiry into mass communication devices in his work is taken as a starting point; and it is proposed a reading of Foucault’s oeuvre focusing on the few places in which he referred to the theme, especially his reflections on the emergence of the notion of “public” as a dimension of the “population”. Secondly, it establishes the ways in which his thinking has been resumed by contemporary thinkers who have placed the centrality of communicational techniques of power, such as Maurizio Lazzarato and Byung-Chul Han, and reinterpreted using in both cases Gilles Deleuze's proposals on control societies. In this respect, the focus is on how the concepts of “biopolitics” and “biopower” have been critically retaken as starting points for the construction of notions, such as “noopolitics” and “psychopolitics”, which seek to give account of the forms of power that are exercised no longer on bodies but primarily on the mind or psyche.