It is a tragic fact that humanity has been living amidst a regime of perpetual warfare since known history. From the last 100 years alone, we have seen (amongst many others), two major European world wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the War on Terror, and now the Virus Wars. In line with the unfolding trend of technology, the ‘wars’ are shifting from inter-bodies (between bodies) to intra-body (within bodies). In this current state of ‘perpetual warfare’, there are now attempts to colonise the terrain within our most sacred space – the human biological body.
In my previous essay on biopower (see New Dawn 183), I noted there had been a shift from the disciplinary societies as described by French philosopher Michel Foucault toward more fluid networks of biopower control. As Foucault noted, the biopower model functions to tax rather than organise production, and to rule on death rather than to administer life. The older biopower models focused on the exterior modes of enclosure – school, factory, hospital, prison, etc. – whereas what I put forth in this essay is that the new reign of biopower is about gaining access to our interior spaces. Older exterior institutions (school, factory, etc.) have an expiration date – the human being, in contrast, is an ongoing and continuous ‘body’ available for generational control. The new regime seeks an ongoing vested interest in the exterior and interior spaces. These are the reconfigured social-body politics of control – or, the politics of control-biology. The new reign of biopower is concerned with continual modulation, adapting to ongoing events more like a wavelength than a fixed broadcast.
The new enclosures are no longer disciplinary institutions (as identified by Foucault) but the fluid flows and networks of inter and intra-body spaces and the new regimes that are arising to govern these social-biological terrains. The individual human body is being fully incorporated into the global body politique. There are no ‘fixed markets’ for biopower; instead, there are flexible networks of exchange. Yet the question remains – who sets the parameters of legal authority on these exchanges?
We have truly entered the age of the erosion of biological boundaries. We are all being targeted as possible mobile hosts for our own crippling disease – regardless of the true potency of the viruses – just as a person could be a suspect in the War on Terror. In both cases, the human being has been re-cast as a site of suspicion and risk. The body is now re-classified as a ‘site of weakness’ – which may itself play into a later transhumanism agenda.
Becoming ever clearer is that the new reign of biopower will deny us our rights to keep the frontiers of the human body closed. The fundamental right to health (health safety) is being reconstituted as a legal obligation to health (biosecurity).17 This process, overtly and covertly, attempts to reorganise human citizenry in a way to create maximum obedience to institutions of governance and security. This is also a process that will eventually lead to denying each person their individual sovereignty.
The rise of biosecurity amid the converging health intelligence (HI), along with tech-based “integrated protocols,” and increased reliance on Artificial Intelligence both within healthcare systems as well as state-sponsored surveillance, all point towards a worryingly cohesive ‘full spectrum dominance’ over human life. It is a biopower-enforced control system not only between bodies and within bodies but also within the human mind.
Biopower is also, I propose, a control system for human consciousness. This is confirmed by rapid moves on the internet to censor any information that criticises or is contrary to consensus narratives and programming. A case in point: the UK Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth (Labour) is demanding a law be put into effect, with financial and criminal penalties, to “stamp out dangerous” anti-vaccine content online. It is time for all political parties, says Ashworth, “to work with the government on a cross-party basis to build trust and help promote take-up of the vaccine.”18
1 thought on “The New Reign of Biopower: The Rise of Control-Biology”
The hidden powers seem to consider that man cannot evolve any further after his many millennia’s of struggling with natural selection; he needs their help to take the next step; to where?
The consensus is that his incredibly complex evolved brain just cannot compete with a computer that is now being designed to replaces it.
I do not consider that nature or a God put us here to compete with a computer. Natural selection is about survival and we, being gifted with an energy that is cosmological and not supplied by batteries.
What happens to AI when the grid goes down or the batteries need replacing. I’m sure they have considered that but the immense pleasure man experiences with life will be relegated to a Computer Application.
I guess it can be recorded if any of us survive to view it. https://www.stopworldcontrol.com/madej
The hidden powers seem to consider that man cannot evolve any further after his many millennia’s of struggling with natural selection; he needs their help to take the next step; to where?
The consensus is that his incredibly complex evolved brain just cannot compete with a computer that is now being designed to replaces it.
I do not consider that nature or a God put us here to compete with a computer. Natural selection is about survival and we, being gifted with an energy that is cosmological and not supplied by batteries.
What happens to AI when the grid goes down or the batteries need replacing. I’m sure they have considered that but the immense pleasure man experiences with life will be relegated to a Computer Application.
I guess it can be recorded if any of us survive to view it.
https://www.stopworldcontrol.com/madej