ABSTRACT
Thus far, we have been concerned with the forms of discourse that shaped the British press’ reporting and commentary on the Famine. We have seen how culture, politics and economics contributed to the language, images and concepts that shaped the way the Famine was presented to the public. Behind these lay an even more important factor — power. Questions of power lie at the heart of any famine. Those without food have no power; those with food have potentially enormous power. In the case o f faminestricken Ireland, Britain, controlling the flow and distribution o f food into and within the country, had power over Ireland. The exercise of this power was not only a question o f feeding or not feeding those who were starving. Britain had, or thought it had, the power to change, to control, to remake the people o f Ireland. This corresponds to Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘bio-power,’ the institutional disciplining of the human body through the state’s control of the social body. Bio-power involved
...propagation, births and mortality, the level o f health, life expectancy and longevity, with all the conditions that can cause these to vary. Their supervision was effected through an entire series o f interventions and regulatory controls: a bio-politics o f the population....
