After
reading Vermulen's article about Ghostwritten
and biopower, my first inclination is to do some Robbins-esque research into
the methods by which our own government might be engaged in biopower. I had to look up the term biopower, and according
to Wikipedia (which at least sounds right), is that Foucault coined the term to
describe the techniques by which a state (or other entity) attempts to control
the population. So let's start with the
Today show.
I
often watch shows like Today as a sort-of guide in what NOT to buy. In an hour of the Today show, you might see
generally the same thing on any given morning:
An interview with a Hollywood
star with a new film being released (on the promotion tour, so to speak); a
rushed cooking segment with a "celebrity" chef, with the hosts
putting on their best smiley face while they eat half-cooked food at the end;
another rushed segment with a "fashion expert" who professes to
intimate all the secrets of how to get high fashion at the lowest prices
possible; a medical segment about the newest disease sweeping the nation; a
single song concert by a generally inoffensive musical group; a short weather
report; a hastily read segment of "national" or "world"
news--all of this interspersed with short segments of the hosts of the show
interacting with fans (who swarm outside, even in freezing New York
winters). What I'm not sure about is whether
this is supposed to be simulative of some authoritative American experience
everyone is supposed to have, or if they're just trying to get us to buy
shit. There isn't really a question of
whether or not this is biopower in action.
People do, in fact, buy the fashionable clothes featured on the show,
and the go home and cook the meals featured on the show, and go out on the
weekend and see the films of the actors featured on the show, stopping on their
way at the pharmacy to pick up the new drug for the ailment caused by the last
miracle drug they took that had side-effects.
The question that remains: Who is
the executor of this biopower? Perhaps
this is what Mitchell is beginning to get at in Ghostwritten: exploring the
question of who is doing these things to us, so we can get at the bigger
question of why.
I love that you get at this question of who is the executor of this biopower. I'm doing my presentation on it so I don't want to give anything away (although we are both privy to the information), but, I tried to get at this same point in my post about authorship, although I think it just opened more doors than I was willing to walk through. I think that Mitchell does this through authorship by asking the reader, at times even overtly, who is writing this story? Who is telling this story and who is really in control here? The great thing about biopower is that control doesn't need to be governed by one source anymore just at Mitchell doesn't need to write his novel with one thread that runs through the entire thing. I think this also ties into Sandra's post about her son's Christmas gifts. By personalizing what the "individual" wants, although this is clearly not individual considering The Today Show is not being viewed by only one individual, then one individual can feel unique while conforming. I think the best way to understand this conformity for me personally is through my facebook account. I go on facebook and the ads that always pop up are for engagement rings. Clearly, I would not be purchasing my own engagement ring but I apparently fall into the demographic that would be receiving one so these ads are present to make me want one. So while I scroll through my feed and see pictures of weddings and babies, I also see ads for engagement rings reminding me that this is a social structure that I too should conform to. But to bring it back to your question, biopower exists through these types of structures (advertising, social media, popular television programming). And it is not necessarily an individual or a zookeeper that is performing the organizing power that seeks to control the individual, but rather larger social infrastructures that are patterned on capitalism.
ReplyDeleteShannon, you put this response very well. The thing is that biopower doesn't have an executor in the same way that sovereign power does.
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