Biopolitics Kritk

They who are subjected to a field of visibility, and who know it, assume responsibility for the constraints of power; they make them play spontaneously upon themselves; they inscribe in themselves the power relation in which they simultaneously play both roles; they become the principle of their own subjection. By this very fact, the external power may throw off its physical weight; it tends to the non-corporal; and, the more it approaches this limit, the more constant, profound and permanent are its effects: it is a perpetual victory that avoids any physical confrontation and which is always decided in advance.

—Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish

Since Michel Foucault showed how disciplinary power operated in any situation where individuals are forced to "assume responsibility for the constraints of power," we know that incentives for normalization are a far more insidious form of domination than the overt commands of regulation (Discipline & Punish). Today, one of the primary fields where people are called upon to police themselves in order to defend society from apocalyptic threats is the environment; ecology is the final frontier in the regulation of life, and the threat of this regulation's failure penetrates so intimately into our daily lives--the air we breathe, the water we drink, the ways in which we move around--that it is a small step from ecological self-sacrifice to an ecological fascism which demands that life itself be harnessed for our own protection and perfection.