Atomic power exposes the paradox of a sovereign power that kills life itself

Evidence

We can therefore immediately identify the paradoxes that appear at the points where the exercise of this biopower reaches its limits. The paradoxes become apparent if we look, on the one hand, at atomic power, which is not simply the power to kill, in accordance with the rights that are granted to any sovereign, millions and hundreds of millions of people (after all, that is traditional). The workings of contemporary political power are such that atomic power represents a paradox that is difficult, if not impossible, to get around. The power to manufacture and use the atom bomb represents the deployment of a sovereign power that kills, but it is also the power to kill life itself. So the power that is being exercised in this atomic power 1s exercised in such a way that it is capable of suppressing lite itself. And, therefore, to suppress itself insofar as it is the power that guarantees life. Either it is sovereign and uses the atom bomb, and therefore cannot be power, biopower, or the power to guarantee life, as it has been ever since the nineteenth century. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 268

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The sovereign-power-that-kills-life-itself paradox is a dense, generative knot central to Foucault’s later necropolitics-in-the-making.
• XREF: Directly feeds necropolitics readings in the Islamophobia module — the sovereign right to expose populations to death under biopower. — connects to: Sovereign power over life is asymmetrical, always weighted toward killing — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 255; Sovereign power makes the subject’s very life and death depend on its will — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 255; Biopower replaces sovereignty’s power over death with power over life — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 262 (+3 more)

Related

• Atomic power exposes biopower’s paradox of killing to preserve life. (similarity 0.89)
• Biopower replaces sovereignty’s power over death with power over life (similarity 0.86)
• Sovereign power makes the subject’s very life and death depend on its will (similarity 0.83)
• Sovereign power over life is asymmetrical, always weighted toward killing (similarity 0.83)
• Nineteenth-century power added ‘make live and let die’ alongside sovereign right to kill (similarity 0.79)
• Mortality blocks property from becoming a true political principle. (similarity 0.78)
• Biopower takes control of life through the twin poles of body and population (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Sovereignty inherently contradicts its protective mandate by holding power of death. #corroborates (0.90) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 557
• Human reasoning creates a paradox regarding the value of life. #qualifies (0.75) — Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 104
• An ultimate power to decide generates its own norms and cannot be trusted #expands (0.75)