Abstract

Modern political power has two branches: the sovereign and the biopolitical. With the former, the state makes laws, with the latter, it governs. Of the two branches of modern power, the sovereign and the biopolitical, this essay attempts to thematise only the latter, trying in particular to emphasise the de-subjectifying effects of biopolitical rationality and focusing on the three levels of biopolitical rationality: its economistic matrix, its epidemiological apparatus, and its ideological order. By briefly analysing these three levels, or registers, of biopower’s effectiveness we might understand certain characteristics of the ‘mental health’ construct and of the role that it has in our societies