My master’s thesis will focus on the post-structuralist concept of biopolitics and, more specifically, on biopolitical production. Biopolitics implies a system where certain kinds of human beings with certain kinds subjectivities and bodies are being produced through a complex apparatuses i.e. politics is targeted to have an impact on life itself. These include macro level institutions, such as, state-related institutions e.g. army, hospital, school as well as micro level institutions, for instance, family, different social organizations and everyday practices. This is not to say that behind these familiar everyday institutions there would be a kind of secret society pulling strings like master of the puppets; on the contrary, we are only defining a quite new form of power in human history and the consequences of that power.

This biopolitical form of power is closely intertwined with the rise of capitalism and, as Foucault for example claims, capitalism would not have been possible without a new kind of grip on people; what was needed was docile and healthy human beings to work in the factories, to fight the nationalistic/imperialistic wars and to reproduce those forms of subjectivity possible to be subjugated by capitalism and power. Within this development there were new needs for scientific knowledge of human beings through which power had again new ways to affect on people. Here the crucial concept is “normal/normality” which is an operative tool in order to put people in specific and useful categories from the perspective of capitalism and the most powerful forms of power.

The main issue in my thesis will be the role of production. Therefore, I will start with Marx’ problematization of the relationship between mode of production and ideology. This will be only a historical background though and not a substantial analysis of Marx himself. Then I’ll present the link between Marx and post-structuralism, namely Louis Althusser and his theoretic work which had a great influence on the thinking of Foucault and Deleuze and Quattari.

Then the main part of the thesis will be an analysis of the Foucaultian development of the concept and how other people, such as Deleuze and Quattari, contributed on the themes problematized by biopolitics.

In the end I will focus on the philosophical and political implications of the biopolitics and then, perhaps, utilize more recent writers, e.g. Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno, Mario Tronti etc..