Unmasking the Politics Behind Personal Struggle
In this neoliberal epoch, the concept of power has evolved. In contemporary times, power is no longer a tool for repression but rather a means for governance and control. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of biopolitics and power, as well as Byung-Chul Han’s theory of psychopolitics, this paper will examine the intersectionality between neoliberalism, power, and control. The current political and legal landscape promotes healthism, self-surveillance, and overachievement among the masses.
The system advocates for the privatization of profits and socialization of losses, reframing structural injustices as an individual’s failure. The abandonment of collective responsibility has morphed an individual from an object of obedience to an object of achievement, one who is expected to self-optimize and bear the burden of systemic failures. However, the current systemic failures have been disguised as individual failures, pathologizing those people who are unable to conform.
However, a global system based on neoliberal ideals of deregulation, non-intervention, austerization, and dispossession nevertheless exerts control through normalization and panopticism of individuals. This article, by analyzing the contemporary legal frameworks of economy, welfare, and self-surveillance, will reveal how law contributes to the normalization of individualism and control under neoliberal ideals. Furthermore, it will investigate the weaponization of contemporary legal frameworks to exacerbate inequality, depoliticize suffering, and intensify exploitation under the guise of freedom, well-being, and individual responsibility.
From Sovereign Power to Biopower
In the postmodern world, Michel Foucault describes the evolution of the conceptualization of power. He propounded the shift of power from sovereign to biopower for the governance of individuals. According to Foucault, the repressive powers of the sovereign—juridico-discursive have been exchanged for the normalization of power. The sovereign power that was once the authority to let live and die has been transitioned to biopower—make live and let die. According to him, humans have been reduced to mere subjects who are no longer punished but regulated.
However, this regulation of human conduct takes place through health laws, welfare policies, and population management by the states. The rationale is to internalize values and norms in individuals and implicitly govern their behaviors. Thus, power is professed in a far subtler way in contemporary societies.
In the “Will of Knowledge,” Foucault describes biopower as, “A power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations.”
According to Foucault, repressive power has been used on rare occasions in our lives. Most of the time, we have been governed by the normalization of norms and values. Consequently, laws and rules are no longer tools for prohibition—they are used to shape and nurture seemingly healthy and self-disciplined subjects. These disciplined subjects have been commodified as the cheap workforce in these biopolitical regimes. Thus, this transition showcases the emergence of a world order that does not prohibit but optimizes.
This transition has been termed by Han as “the excessive positivity.” According to Han, in an excessively positive society, individuals are reduced to achievement subjects. The self-worth of individuals has been strictly tied to their work. This shifts the responsibility to provide food, shelter, clothes, and other necessities from the state to the individuals.
As a result, the eradication of poverty, provision of employment, protection from exploitation, and alleviation of individual suffering are no longer the responsibilities of the state. However, the individuals who fail to comply with the regulations of this optimized society are otherized, while systemic failures of state policies remain unaddressed.
Pauperization as a Tool for Governance: Law, Poverty, and Labor Exploitation
Furthermore, in the neoliberal era, driven by productivity and optimization, poverty is no longer a systemic failure but a state weapon for societal regulation. The state, through its economic and legal apparatus, ensures the presence of poverty in society. Rather than probing into the exploitative policies of government, neoliberal economies inculcate poverty as a personal failure, amounting to backwardness, underdevelopment, and inadequate knowledge of the individuals. To offset this reality, biopolitical states obtain their support from the laissez-faire system. The states assert that the growth brought by the neoliberal economies is utilized for the collective good and characterize it as the trickle-down effect. Hence, the trickle-down effect ensures the pauperization of the masses.
However, this pauperization is essential to maintain a precarious class in the society that can be easily disciplined, surveilled, and economically exploited. In a biopolitical regime, this pauperized segment of society is regulated through welfare schemes, health policies, and state surveillance. The legal system regulates the provision of welfare policies with the imposition of infinitesimal conditionalities. These conditionalities include the proof of deservingness, proof of citizenship, and innumerable behavioral and work requirements. Notwithstanding, such policies do not reflect the goodwill of governments but showcase the demand for compliance and discipline from the masses. According to the Foucauldian principle, this reflects the management of population rather than the eradication of poverty from society.
Byung-Chul Han further extends this critique by politicizing individualism and poverty. According to him, humans have been reduced to animal laborans, who exploit themselves and do it voluntarily without external constraints. The absence of constraints has been termed by Foucault as “normalization.”
In this biopolitical society, law does not safeguard the rights of the underprivileged and vulnerable segments of society; however, it provides minimal resources for their survival. In this way, law aims to protect the broader apparatus of exploitation by maintaining cheap, disposable labor under the guise of inclusion and protection.
Panopticism and Self-Surveillance: Legal Mechanisms for Control
Today, state surveillance extends beyond prisons. As poverty ensures the availability of cheap, disposable labor, the presence of panopticism and self-surveillance ensures compliance in the current biopolitical regimes. Panopticism is a social theory developed by Foucault that describes the phenomenon of internal regulation by individuals under the fear of constant surveillance by the authorities.
Under the neoliberal rationale, panopticism and self-surveillance are prevalent in real time as well. Contemporary states instill the mechanism of the panopticon to regulate, discipline, and intercept the population. Subsequently, as elucidated in the post-COVID era, employers refused employment to individuals who failed to provide vaccination certificates, which highlights the manifestation of internalized control and discipline.
However, the panopticism by the authorities to monitor data has been performed in multiple ways. These include the registration of identity cards, online tracking through biometric ID systems, healthcare surveillance through vaccination records and insurance, CCTV proliferation in public places, and the recording of phone calls and messages. These policies look benign and apolitical, but they represent a deep-rooted system of state control and panopticism.
Furthermore, if we analyze the legal landscape of Pakistan, we come across contemporary legal frameworks, such as the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 and the Prevention of Electronic Crime Act (amendment) 2025 (PECA), illustrating state-sanctioned panopticism. Section 54(1) of the Pakistan Telecommunications (Re-organization) Act, 1996 (PTRA), allows the federal government to authorize interception of calls and messages, or tracing of calls, for national security or crime investigation. It epitomizes how law institutionalizes both coercive and voluntary forms of watching to discipline the population.
Moreover, state-sanctioned welfare policies further instill self-regulation in the individuals rather than questioning the broader apparatus of economic exploitation of the states. In Pakistan, programs such as the Benazir Bhutto Income Support (BISP) and the Sehat Card require compliance with health and financial regulations for individuals to become eligible. Failure to meet these requirements has been categorized as an individual’s failure rather than systemic inefficiency.
In addition to that, corporate workplaces also institutionalize self-surveillance. Many workplaces in Pakistan provide insurance rebates to employees who provide proof of gym memberships. By requiring gym memberships, biopolitical regimes shift responsibility from the state to the individuals, illustrating the notion of internal surveillance as theorized by Foucault.
Furthermore, the internalization of surveillance has been depoliticized under the biopolitical rationale. It has been normalized by the masses. This physical and online surveillance has been labeled as a private choice of people. Even though it operates as a tool for regulation and discipline. Legal frameworks and state policies no longer punish or impose fines. It subtly cajoles people with incentivization and normalization of discipline and surveillance practices. This illustrates the concept of governmentality: the methods and strategies utilized by contemporary governments to guide human actions towards intended outcomes.
Conclusion
In an age where biopolitics governs the body and psychopolitics colonizes the minds, laws have become complicit in the depoliticization of individual sufferings. Individual exploitation has been intensified by characterizing it as a personal misfortune—rather than a systemic failure. To confront the broader architecture of modern biopolitical states, it is pertinent to understand and politicize suffering and exploitation as a weapon of resistance against control. Drawing from Arendt’s Vita Activia, we can reclaim public action as a tool of emancipation from political, economic, and social exploitation. In this rigged system of oppression, rather than suffering in isolation, we can forge the system through collective action. We can disrupt corrupt governmentality by creating a space for organized critique and democratic disruption. Instead of individual gains and profit maximization, we can call for redistribution of resources, dismantle mechanisms of dispossession, and co-create a future of shared sufferings and resources grounded in justice, equity, and solidarity.
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