From biopower to psychopolitics

in the age of technology, restriction gives way to modulation

Abstract

This paper analyzes the reconfiguration of forms of power in the context of contemporary neoliberalism, starting from the transition from biopower, characteristic of the disciplinary societies of 20th-century liberalism, to psychopower, as formulated in recent critical literature. While biopower operated fundamentally on bodies and biological life, through disciplinary and surveillance mechanisms, psychopower acts in a more subtle and diffuse way, directly affecting the subjectivity, desires, and unconscious processes of individuals. This new rationality of power finds its main instruments of operation in digital technologies, algorithms, and the massive use of personal data. Unlike the classic panoptic model, control is no longer exercised through confinement or direct repression, but through voluntary exposure, hyperconnectivity, and the continuous modulation of behaviors, guided by the logic of consumption, performance, and self-optimization. In this context, discourses of freedom, autonomy, and personal fulfillment conceal sophisticated forms of psychological control and self-exploitation, contributing to the individualization of subjects and the weakening of the public sphere and rational debate. The objective of the study is to understand, at a theoretical level, how the use of algorithmic technologies and personal data can be interpreted as a central element of psychopower in 21st-century neoliberalism, problematizing techno-utopian readings and highlighting their political, social, and subjective implications. Methodologically, the deductive method is adopted, with a qualitative approach of a theoretical-analytical nature, through bibliographic and documentary research.