biopolitics

Meaning

Noun

• The interdisciplinary studies relating biology and political science.
• Politics (style of government) that regulates populations through biopower.
• Anticapitalist insurrection using life and the body as weapons.
• The political application of bioethics.
• A political spectrum that reflects positions towards the sociopolitical consequences of biotechnology.

Origin

• 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).