how the two work concurrently provide the fuel for his analysis of racism.
Foucault’s Analysis of Racism
For Foucault, racism describes the violence that emerges within biopolitical
societies, societies in which power works to foster rather than to destroy life. Despite the
fact that the directive of biopolitical societies—enhancing life—appears benign and
nonviolent, Foucault recognizes that violence surfaces in biopolitical societies as well,
and that although biopower lacks the displays of violence that mark sovereign power, it
has not freed itself from violence. According to Foucault, the violence inherent in
biopolitical societies differs from the blatant coercion and spectacular force that
characterizes sovereign power in that biopolitical societies deploy violence as part of the
project of enhancing the life of the social body rather than increasing the power of the
sovereign. Particularly in the lectures, Foucault is concerned with how biopolitical
societies exercise the sovereign right to kill, how they translate the sovereign right of
“taking life or letting live” into the biopolitical directive of “making live and letting die.”
Through this concern Foucault elaborates his understanding of racism. He states,
“Racism is the indispensable precondition that allows someone to be killed, that allows
others to be killed. Once the State functions in the biopower mode, racism alone can
justify the murderous function of the State.”
He continues by suggesting that within
biopolitical societies, racism “is the precondition for exercising the right to kill. If the
power of normalization wished to exercise the old sovereign right to kill, it must become
Thus, Foucault envisions racism as the means by which biopower absorbs
sovereign power, the site at which the two forms of power converge.
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Convention