The Routledge Guidebook to Foucault's the History of Sexuality by Taylor Chloë;

Author:Taylor, Chloë;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

When no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq and no link with Al-Qaeda could be established, the Bush and Blair administrations shifted tactics, emphasizing the massacres that Hussein had visited on his own people. Now the invasion of Iraq was recast as a civilizing and charity mission: its purpose had not been to protect American lives so much as to save Iraqi lives. While it seems clear that this claim, like the claims about weapons of mass destruction, was a pretence, the important point is that governments now need pretences to wage war and need, in particular, to show that their wars are vital. For most of history, armies could invade foreign countries without such hypocrisy. The ancient Romans felt no need to pretend they were liberating people through their military conquests; they could be upfront about their objectives as they sacked and pillaged. It would never have occurred to them to disguise war as self-defence or humanitarian effort, as we do now, even when our first acts are to slaughter thousands of people, turn millions more into refugees and immediately secure the oil fields. Today, however, nations must justify their slaughters in the name of life.

Foucault argues that there will, paradoxically, be more wars and genocides under biopower than under sovereign power. He writes:

If genocide is indeed the dream of modern powers, this is not because of a recent return of the ancient right to kill, it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population.

(Foucault, 1978, p. 137)

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