Biopolitics: The Art of Modern State Governance Author: Zhang Kai Publisher: Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press

- Editor's Recommendation -

Wang Min'an: "'Biopolitics' is one of Foucault's most precious intellectual legacies, but there are many different opinions on this key concept. Foucault himself used this concept in different meanings on different occasions, which made this legacy even more complicated. Zhang Kai's book comprehensively sorted out and carefully analyzed Foucault's relevant discussions in the mid-to-late 1970s, thus providing a complete, accurate and clear discussion of this key concept and this precious legacy. This is an important advancement in Foucault research in China."

- Introduction -

"Biopolitics" is a complex and sophisticated art of governance, or in other words, it is a unique power device in modern society. It allows modern people to accept certain truths about themselves, accept the intervention of various power technologies, accept the rationality of real politics, and also accept danger. Moreover, "biopolitics" is by no means a state ruling strategy in the traditional sense, nor is it a certain sovereign power oppression, but rather those daily, socialized mechanisms. It is education in schools and transformation in prisons; it is treatment in hospitals and isolation of infectious patients; it is welfare protection in society and also racial genocide; it guarantees people's freedom and deprives people of the right to choose another life. "Biopolitics" requires people to live, and it will also strive to give people a better life. But in the promise of modern society to people's happy life, what Foucault sees is another picture: disciplined individuals, lack of imagination, forgetfulness of pleasure, and control of freedom. It is precisely because of this that Foucault is obsessed with transgression, dangerous life, and death: "Let us rather give a meaning and beauty to death that erases everything."

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