The Body as an Arena of Power: Biopolitics, the Medicalization of Social Life, and State Control over Sexuality, Reproduction, and Corporeal Identity from a Foucauldian Perspective

Abstract

The human body has emerged as one of the primary sites through which political power is exercised, social norms are inscribed, and state authority is materialized in contemporary societies. This article develops a comprehensive Foucauldian analysis of biopolitics, the medicalization of social life, and state control over sexuality, reproduction, and corporeal identity, with particular attention to the Indonesian context. Drawing upon Michel Foucault's genealogical analysis of biopower, disciplinary power, and governmentality—as developed in Discipline and Punish, The History of Sexuality, and his Collège de France lectures—alongside Achille Mbembe's extension of biopolitical theory through the concept of necropolitics, the study examines how the bodies of citizens are subjected to multiple, overlapping regimes of power that simultaneously constitute, normalize, and constrain corporeal subjectivity. Through systematic qualitative review of empirical literature and documentary analysis of Indonesian regulatory frameworks, the article identifies six major domains in which biopolitical power operates in the Indonesian context: reproductive governance through family planning programs; sexuality regulation through criminal law, religious authority, and moral policing; the pathologization and persecution of non-normative gender and sexual identities; the medicalization of mental health and social deviance; pandemic biopolitics and digital bodily surveillance; and the normalization of disabled bodies through rehabilitation programs. The study argues that Indonesian biopolitics represents a distinctive configuration that combines Foucauldian disciplinary power with Islamic moral authority and postcolonial governance logics, producing a complex and layered system of corporeal control that is simultaneously modernizing and conservative, rights-expanding and rights-restricting. The analysis contributes to broader debates on the global diversification of biopolitical formations and the specific articulations of body politics in postcolonial Muslim-majority societies.

Keywords

Biopolitics; biopower; medicalization; Foucault; disciplinary power; sexuality; reproduction; corporeal identity; governmentality; Indonesia; necropolitics