Embodying Japan: Cultures of Sport, Beauty, and Medicine 2017

What is 'bio-power'?

In Miller’s piece “Foucauldian theory and the making of the Japanese sporting body," he describes how Foucault’s concept of bio-power helps bring the Japanese people together to form a “nationalistic, triumphalist consciousness” (29).  “Bio-power,” a term coined by Michel Foucault and described by Aaron Miller, “creates a mechanism that routinizes physical behavior” (16).  People in power are able to manipulate people without power, such as the average citizen of a nation or group, by using Foucault’s concept of bio-power.  Miller explains that “through sport,” this exact thing has happened in Japan.  “Japanese bodies have been made into ‘subjects’” (16).  I believe this exploitation of people and the use of bio-power to bring Japanese people together can represent the word gattai that Allison described in her piece on the Go Renjā.  To relate it to the Power Rangers, the people of the nation of Japan are the same as the separated forms of the Power Rangers, and the “nationalistic, triumphalist consciousness” that Miller presents is the same as their combined, mecha form.

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