Biopolitics, Biopower and Selfcare in Anti-Smoking Campaign on Cigarette Packs

Abstract

This article discusses the constitution of the smoker subject in anti-smoking campaigns present in the statements molded over the syncretic materiality of cigarette packs. We reflect about two dimensions that involve the body of this subject, considered a discursive surface where knowledge/power relations operate: the body vested by the biopower, through which are promoted the biopolitics of the population, and the body as an aesthetic of self, in order to reflect about the care and the government of self. We use the theory of the Discourse Analysis, mobilizing Foucaultian concepts/notions of subject, governmentality, biopower, biopolitics and selfcare as analytical categories. Methodologically, our analysis has a qualitative approach with a descriptive and interpretative nature and draws on a corpus consisting of nine of the statements above. We conclude that the anti-smoking campaigns intersect medical, legal and aesthetic discourses, which indicate ways of taking care of oneself while also allowing a glimpse at a power that aims to manage people's lives with the ultimate goal of making them more productive and less costly to the State.

Keywords
Discourse Analysis; governmentality; anti-smoking campaigns