The State Racism by Michel Foucault

Abstract

This text’s objective is to discuss State racism in Michel Foucault’s work. Considering the biopolitical framework, we will see how state racism can be considered a strategy for exercising power over the social body. Dividing by splitting the social body and establishing a binary opposition among races, the power exercise will operate on biological life. It will also be addressed how scientific discourse has been developed in some cases to collaborate to this strategy. We will see how it happens in developing countries, in which there are segments of the population that increase mortality rates according to what is planned by the state. In them, the devalued and marginalized individuals, the dangerous ones of the social body, can be plausibly considered privileged targets of State racism.

Keywords

• Racismo de Estado
• Biopolítica
• Michel Foucault