The body in Foucault's analytics of power

Abstract

Our reading consists in articulating the body as an indispensable place in the analytic of power developed between 1972 and 1978, marking an empirical, physical materialism in which power is above all productive. It is argued that the body is the point of Foucault’s analysis of fragmented empirical experience, fixed to time and space, giving the form of its analytic of power that distances itself from any universal or totalising theory in function of the description of the mode of exercise of power in their daily lives. Seeking for a broad understanding of the philosopher’s thought, our research consists in the investigation of the body in its varied relations, either at the level of correction of the body of individuals, disciplines, or in the regulation, with biopower, or government, with conduction of individual and collective bodies, openness to the multiplicity of subjects managed by the State.