Sovereignty power taxes goods while disciplinary power surveils bodies continuously

Evidence

It was a type of power that presupposed a closely meshed grid of material coercions rather than the physical existence of a sovereign, and it therefore defined a new economy of power based upon the principle that there had to be an increase both in the subjugated forces and in the force and efficacy of that which subjugated them. It seems to me that this type of power is the exact, point-for-point opposite of the mechanics of power that the theory of sovereignty described or tried to transcribe. The theory of sovereignty is bound up with a form of power that is exercised over the land and the produce of the land, much more so than over bodies and what they do. [This theory] concerns power’s displacement and appropriation not of time and labor, but of goods and wealth. This makes it possible to transcribe, into juridical terms, discontinuous obligations and tax records, but not to code continuous surveillance; it is a theory that makes it possible to found absolute power around and on the basis of the physical existence of the sovereign, but not continuous and permanent systems of surveillance. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 54

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the opposition between disciplinary power (continuous surveillance of bodies) and sovereignty power (discontinuous taxation of land and goods) — a core vocabulary item for the toolkit.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s planned toolkit on biopolitics/necropolitics and to how modern bureaucratic rationality enables mass exclusion — this sovereignty/discipline opposition reappears in Islamophobia readings on state power over populations. — connects to: Biopower replaces sovereignty’s power over death with power over life — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 262; State power depends on borrowing the bodies of its subjects — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 695; State power depends materially on the bodies citizens lend it. (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Disciplinary power stays invisible while making its subjects compulsorily visible #corroborates (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 288
• State power depends on borrowing the bodies of its subjects #complicates (0.80) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 695
• State power depends materially on the bodies citizens lend it. #complicates (0.78)
• Taxation evolved from gifts and penalties to chiefs #expands (0.70) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 270