Biopolitics reframed illness as chronic endemic drain rather than acute epidemic.
Evidence
At the end of the eighteenth century, it was not epidemics that were the issue, but something else—what might broadly be called endemics, or in other words, the form, nature, extension, duration, and intensity of the illnesses prevalent in a population. These were illnesses that were difficult to eradicate and that were not regarded as epidemics that caused more frequent deaths, but as permanent factors which—and that is how they were dealt with—sapped the population’s strength, shortened the working week, wasted energy, and cost money, both because they led to a fall in production and because treating them was expensive. In a word, illness as phenomena affecting a population. Death was no longer something that suddenly swooped down on life—as in an epidemic. Death was now something permanent, something that slips into life, perpetually gnaws at it, diminishes it and weakens it. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 259
Categorization
- XREF: The shift from epidemic to endemic tracks how biopolitics turns death into a permanent chronic condition — the logic necropolitics later radicalizes. — connects to: Tropical medicine reframed colonized Africans as biological threats justifying racial segregation; New scientific knowledge redirected blame for social problems to environments and microbes.
- DEFINE: Defines the endemics/population-illness orientation of biopolitical medicine.