sovereign power

is a form of power concerned with the state's power over territory (or land), whereas disciplinary power is concerned primarily with the body, namely, with breaking a multiplicity of men into individual bodies. Biopolitics, then, is addressed to a multiplicity of men (or population).

disciplinary power is primarily concerned with breaking a 'multiplicity of men' into 'individual bodies,' whereas biopolitics 'is addressed to a multiplicity of men' (SMD, 243). While sovereign and disciplinary power are charged with policing life as individual subjects, then, biopolitics disenfranchises each individual's life and death by turning it into a generalized matter of population. If the subject is 'neutral' in relation to sovereign and disciplinary power, s/he becomes a statistic in terms of biopolitics' (Houen 2006)

is concerned with obedience to the law of the king or central authority figure.

sovereign power involves obedience to the law of the king or central authority figure.

is concerned with the state's absolute power over its territory. It was 'exercised over land and the produce of the land, much more so than over bodies and what they do.

Foucault argues, and essentially it involved instituting the state's absolute power over its territory. sovereign power was 'exercised over land and the produce of the land, much more so than over bodies and what they do. . . ' (SMD, 36). (Hoeun 2006).

is founded in a fundamental biopolitical fracture, a distinction between zoe and bios, between people and the people.

the foundation of sovereign power on what Agamben calls a fundamental biopolitical fracture: that between zoe and bios, between people and People' (NET).

is not linked to right-holders but to 'bare life'.

sovereign power is not linked to rightholders, but is covertly linked to a «bare life», which is life included in the political realm by a paradoxical exclusion, exposed to the violence and the decision of sovereign power' (NET).

is not so much about re-establishing balance to bring into play, at its most extreme point, the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength.

The public execution, then, has a juridico-political function. It is a ceremonial by which a momentarily injured sovereignty is reconstituted. It restores that sovereignty by manifesting it at its most spectacular. The public execution, however hasty and everyday, belongs to a whole series of great rituals in which power is eclipsed and restored (coronation, entry of the king into a conquered city, the submission of rebellious subjects)... over and above the crime that has placed the sovereign in contempt, it deploys before all eyes an invincible force. Its aim is not so much to re-establish a balance [p. 49] as to bring into play, as its extreme point, the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength. (foucault 'discipline' : 48-9).

is power which is possessed and then wielded repressively by one individual over another or others, which became ineffective in the face of increasingly com plex social, political and economic relations that developed in the latter part of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries.

The essays in Part I of this book show that the view of Foucault's work as merely negative stems from a fundamental misreading of his conceptualization of power. Foucault argues that with the rise of the modern era, the exercise of power in the West takes new forms. In his book Discipline and Punish, he shows that sovereign power, which is held or possessed and then wielded repressively by one individual over another or others, became ineffective in the face of increasingly com plex social, political and economic relations that developed in the latter part of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries. (Foucault Key Concepts 2).

is power which relies on the ability to decide on whether certain forms of life are worthy of living.

For Agamben, sovereign power relies on the ability to decide on whether certain forms of life are worthy of living. Such a decision, which is a sovereign cut.

sovereign power, n.Definitions

sovereign power