🎙️CWT713: Social Monster-ization, Biopower, and the Politics of the Human

The episode is potentially (though not necessarily) offensive.It explores Michel Foucault’s idea that “monsters” are not simply outsiders to society, but political tools used to define what counts as normal, human, and governable. Through the concept of biopower, Foucault argues that modern states manage populations by separating acceptable lives from “abnormal” ones. Historically, intersex people were framed as “monsters” because they disrupted binary categories, while today transgender people are often targeted through similar rhetoric. [WARNING: I do use an outdated term here and there, as I go into the history of some topics. So, no offense is intended. Also, I forgot to mention that, even though I live in a "rural" area, I know trans people. One of my cousins is transgender, and I have had a few co-workers who are trans...and no, I was not deliberately trying to have LGBT co-workers, or whatever. They are just people that exist, sometimes at workplaces.]This episode also examines a unique topic I may have mentioned before, relevant to me as a Finnish American: How Finnish immigrants in early 20th-century America were racialized and “othered” in an attempt to suppress labor movements. Ultimately, the “monster” is revealed as a social construction created to justify surveillance, exclusion, and state control.