What is a society? “A particular large group of people who share laws, organizations, customs, etc.” (Longman) What exactly is an individual? According to twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault, an individual is composed of a soul and a body, yet it is the body that often first seems to define individuals in society.  In that line of thought, how can a society be controlled? That is where Foucault’s theory about the policing of the body comes in; if one has power over the bodies that constitute the population, he has control over its direction. To gain such power, Foucault describes two types of body control: thanatopower and bio power.

The first form of control that can be exercised over bodies, according to Foucault, is thanatopower. From the Greek, “thana” means death, so literally, thanatopower is a power of death. Another name for it is sovereign power. Thanatopower is achieving control through brute force, threat, torture, or even death. It refers to the use of coercion to gain and maintain power over people, and any kind of resistance is physically threatened by the ruling power. By threatening the body, which according to many, contains the soul, power is established over the entirety of an individual (although Foucault, as for him, claims that the soul is actually the prison of the body and not the other way around, it still does not change the effect of physical threats). In a fear based power system, threats of physical constraint or pain suffice to keep the majority of the population in a state of subjection. Those who resist are physically punished and serve as an example to furthermore increase fear among the rest of the population.

The second form through which policing of the body can be achieved, once again according to Foucault, is called biopower. Simply put, biopower is the control of entire populations through discourses that relate to the body. Such discourses are often medical or sexual. To have the most effective workforce with the least medical costs for the State, people need to be healthy. Therefore, medical propaganda about exercise, food, weight, and many more is put forward. In consumerist capitalist societies, discourses about sex (beauty, sexual attraction, gender, etc.) are used to control where the population lives, what the population looks like, wears, does, etc. Because sex sells, Media tells people what sexuality should be, and in how they are to be defined by it. In such a society, “[ the system ] is not internalized, but incorporated in the body […] bodies are produced so that [the system] is manifest as the essence of their selves, the meaning of their soul, conscience, [the system] of their desire.” (During 377) Looking the part physically involves that individuals become subjects of society (Kelly), the system becomes inherent to the essence, through style and accepted necessities. Cultural values are pushed upon bodies and gain strength as they start to appear on more and more bodies as an added mean of cultural propaganda endorsing the discourse of the Media, and thus, of the dominant system in place. Biopower is very different from thanatopower, as it does not use physical strength. Rather, it relies on the idea that materiality comes prior to signification to further implement cultural coherence (hegemony). The power regime achieves “diffuse and active structuring of the social field [and] this signifying practice effects a social space for and of the body within certain regulatory grids of intelligibility.” Therefore, bodies (and souls) are produced from what is already there, using the relation between space, sets of practices, values, and other societal elements to promote a discourse that will affect society first physically, then directionally as a whole.