Meanings
- uncountableThe interdisciplinary studies relating biology and political science.
But political scientists consider early attempts to borrow from biology to have given biopolitics a bad name, partly because borrowed theories, sometimes despite their naivete or lack of validity, were adopted wholesale by social scientists.
1981 August 23, Rochelle Semmel Albin, “Biopolitics: Odd Hybrid or a Synthesis?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN - uncountablePolitics (style of government) that regulates populations through biopower.
One of Foucault’s key concepts, “biopolitics,” an account of the way that modern state power involves itself in the biological life of its citizens, was amply illustrated by the various governmental responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.
2021 May 25, Ross Douthat, “How Michel Foucault Lost the Left and Won the Right”, in The New York Times, →ISSN1 more example
Because the body was the central force in industrial production, [Byung-Chul] Han argues, then a politics of disciplining, punishing and perfecting the body was understandably central to Foucault’s notion of how power worked. But in the west’s deindustrialised, neoliberal era, such biopolitics is obsolete.
2017 December 30, Stuart Jeffries, “Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul Han – review”, in The Guardian - uncountableAnticapitalist insurrection using life and the body as weapons.
This inside is the productive cooperation of mass intellectuality and affective networks, the productivity of postmodern biopolitics. This militancy makes resistance into counterpower and makes rebellion into a project of love.
2000, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press, →OCLC, page 413 - uncountableThe political application of bioethics.
- uncountableA political spectrum that reflects positions towards the sociopolitical consequences of biotechnology.
Origin
From bio- + politics. Sense 2 was developed by Michel Foucault in The History of Sexuality (1976), sense 3 by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire (2000).
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Chinese Mandarin 生命政治
- 生命政治 (shēngmìng zhèngzhì)Translations
Finnish biopolitiikka
- biopolitiikkaTranslations
German Biopolitik
- BiopolitikTranslations
Greek βιοπολιτική
- βιοπολιτική (viopolitikí)Translations
Cite this entry
biopolitics. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/biopolitics
“biopolitics.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/biopolitics. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “biopolitics,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/biopolitics.
Source: biopolitics on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.