CHAPTER 1

RIGHT OF DEATH ANDPOWER OVER LIFE

Michel Foucault

For a long time; one of the characteristic privileges of sovereign power was theright to decide life and death. In a formal sense, it derived no doubt from theancient patria potestas that granted the father of the Roman family the rightto "dispose" of the life of his children and his slaves; just as he had given themlife, so he could take it away. By the time the right of life and death was framedby the classical theoreticians, it was in a considerably diminished form. It wasno longer considered that this power of the sovereign over his subjects couldbe exercised in an absolute and unconditional way, but only in cases where thesovereign's very existence was in jeopardy: a sort of right of rejoinder. If hewere threatened by external enemies who sought to overthrow him or contesthis rights, he could then legitimately wage war, and require his subjects totake part in the defense of the state; without "directly proposing their death,"he was empowered to "expose their life": in this sense, he wielded an "indirect"power over them of life and death. But if someone dared to rise upagainst him and transgress his laws, then he could exercise a direct powerover the off ender's life: as punishment, the latter would be put to death.Viewed in this way, the power of life and death was not an absolute privilege:it was conditioned by the defense of the sovereign, and his own survival. Mustwe follow Hobbes in seeing it as the transfer to the prince of the natural rightpossessed by every individual to defend his life even if this meant the death ofothers? Or should it be regarded as a specific right that was manifested withthe formation of that new juridical being, the sovereign? In any case, in itsmodern form—relative and limited—as in its ancient and absolute form, theright of life and death is a dissymmetrical one. The sovereign exercised hisright of life only by exercising his right to kill, or by refraining from killing; heevidenced his power over life only through the death he was capable of requiring.The right which was formulated as the "power of life and death" was inreality the right to take life or let live. Its symbol, after all, was the sword. Perhapsthis juridical form must be referred to a historical type of society inwhich power was exercised mainly as a means of deduction (prélèvement), asubtraction mechanism, a right to appropriate a portion of the wealth, a tax ofproducts, goods and ser vices, labor and blood, levied on the subjects. Powerin this instance was essentially a right of seizure: of things, time, bodies, andultimately life itself; it culminated in the privilege to seize hold of life in orderto suppress it.

Since the classical age the West has undergone a very profound transformationof these mechanisms of power. "Deduction" has tended to be no longerthe major form of power but merely one element among others, workingto incite, reinforce, control, monitor, optimize, and organize the forces underit: a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them,rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroyingthem. There has been a parallel shift in the right of death, or at least atendency to align itself with the exigencies of a life-administering power andto define itself accordingly. This death that was based on the right of the sovereignis now manifested as simply the reverse of the right of the social bodyto ensure, maintain, or develop its life. Yet wars were never as bloody as theyhave been since the nineteenth century, and all things being equal, never beforedid regimes visit such holocausts on their own populations. But this formidablepower of death—and this is perhaps what accounts for part of itsforce and the cynicism with which it has so greatly expanded its limits—nowpresents itself as the counterpart of a power that exerts a positive influence onlife, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting itto precise controls and comprehensive regulations. Wars are no longer wagedin the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf ofthe existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose ofwholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have become vital.It is as managers of life and survival, of bodies and the race, that so many regimeshave been able to wage so many wars, causing so many men to be killed.And through a turn that closes the...