the Female Body GOVERNING

Conclusion
Biopolitical Media 201
This chapter shows how the governance of female bodies increasingly
relies on their transformation into media audiences. To demonstrate this
more general claim, we have investigated the cultural work of PCI as a
biopolitical media industry dedicated to promoting reproductive health
by linking communicative genres, communicative expertise, cultural
labor, and media audiences. The need of biopolitical governance to rely
on the genres, techniques, and knowledge associated with communication
suggests at least three urgent needs.
The fi rst need is to challenge the politics of truth associated with
the particular confi guration of communicative expertise and media
health campaigns. Population Communications International is but one
organization among many in the United States and elsewhere increasingly
committed to the design of mediated public health campaigns. Yet,
certain research traditions and funding agencies are aligning to limit
how communication can be imagined within these governing networks.
The current “regime of truth” is contributing to a border that defi nes the
value of communication research. High value communication research
is research that can enter into an alliance with government agencies and
donor organizations, translating communicative expertise into research
affi liations and grant dollars. At the same time, communication research
loses value when it is unable to directly affi liate with the operations
of governing agencies increasingly invested in biopolitical and market
governance.
The second need is an honest exploration of communication as a
cultural technology of government. The chapter demonstrates how
communication emerges as a technique and field of biopolitical governance.
Communication is a technique of governance to the extent
that it becomes a practical knowledge required for disseminating
particular programs, values, and knowledge; and communication is a
field of governance to the extent that it is in and through communicative
competencies, practices, and vocabularies that the modulation of
bodies and souls takes place. Only when we begin to take stock of the
ways in which communication makes possible the shift from juridical
power to biopower might we begin to appreciate how communication
scholars are contributing to the globalization of a “normalizing society”
(Foucault, 1990, p. 144).
Finally, we need to investigate the politics of biopolitical media. A
radical perspective on biopolitical media requires an appreciation of
how biopolitical media thrive in an atmosphere whereby large structural
changes are increasingly removed from the social imaginary.