From sovereign power to the microphysics of power: eating habits, communicational calls and production of subjectivities

Abstract

Based on a bibliographic research, we propose to investigate the intersections between food and power, especially with regard to eating habits, waves of mediatization and the power relations that permeate the constitution of the subjects and the ordering of life from the middle ages to the present. We seek support in the understanding that eating goes beyond biological function and in the Foucauldian microphysics of power; that is, it is a social practice historically constituted by mechanisms and procedures that act at the social level and penetrate the daily lives of the subjects. These reflections allow us to observe the engendering of seigniorial, mercantilist and capitalist rationalities in the ordering of life and in the production of subjectivities, as well as the emergence of media communication and its increasingly accentuated protagonism in a neoliberally controlled society.