From Foucault’s biopolitics to Byung-Chul Han’s psychopolitics: the new tool of power

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the following points: the Foucauldian thesis of discipline, its tools of power and biopolitics; how there has been a social change in the tools of control; and, as the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han states, there has been an overcoming of Foucault's thesis about power and biopower, given several factors, such as: institutional crises of disciplinary tools, rise of technology - especially the exponential growth of social networks and digital media - rupture of panoptism from surveillance over bodies to surveillance over the psyche and non-completeness of the new core of neoliberalism to act on subjects. The methodology that guided the research is theoretical-bibliographical. It was concluded in the research that the complexity in which the neoliberalism of the 21st century exercises power, that is, subjects the subjects, is beyond the Foucauldian discipline, therefore, a new technique of subjection arises, this being the silent and affable psychopolitics of Han.