(Bio)Politics & (Bio)Power: Reconfiguring Michel Foucault’s “Dispositifs” for Contemporary Research

The term “biopolitics”exemplifies the fluidity of scientific concepts when granted epistemic autonomy, adapting to diverse academic and public discourses. It has been widely—often imprecisely—employed across disciplines such as philosophy, political science, sociology, history, medicine, and gender studies, leading to a fragmented and highly contested conceptual landscape. This paper seeks to recover Michel Foucault’s original articulation of biopolitics, focusing on his dispersed and indirect treatment of the term. Foucault’s work serves as the foundation for applying the prefix “bio”to notions of politics and power, though his archaeological and genealogical approach has since been appropriated across various fields. The interdisciplinary expansion of biopolitics has necessitated a hermeneutical reassessment of its role within Foucault’s broader theoretical project, particularly in relation to biopower. This study aims to clarify these concepts and their epistemic significance.