Biopower
Encyclopedia
Biopower was a term coined by French Social theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault
it refers to the practice of modern states and their regulation of their subjects through "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations." Foucault first used the term in his lecture courses at the Collège de France
but the term first appeared in The Will To Knowledge, Foucault's first volume of The History of Sexuality
. In Foucault's work, it has been used to refer to practices of public health, regulation of heredity, and risk regulation (François Ewald), among many other things often linked less directly with literal physical health. It is closely related to a term he uses much less frequently, but which subsequent thinkers have taken up independently, biopolitics
.
of power
, which is a way of managing people as a group. The distinctive quality of this political technology is that it allows for the control of entire populations. It is thus essential to the emergence of the modern nation state, modern capitalism
, etc. Biopower is literally having power over other bodies, "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations". Foucault then goes on to further elaborate in his now famous lectures at the Collège de France between January and April 1978
It relates to the government's concern with fostering the life of the population, and centers on the poles of Disciplinary institutions
("an anatomo-politics of the human body") and regulatory controls ("a biopolitics of the population").
Biopower for Foucault contrasts differently with traditional modes of power based on the threat of death from a sovereign
. In an era where power must be justified both rationally and politically, biopower is utilized by an emphasis on the protection of life rather than the threat of death, on the regulation of the body, and the production of other technologies of power, such as the notion of sexuality
. Regulation of customs, habits, health, reproductive practices, family, "blood", and "well-being" would be straightforward examples of biopower, as would any conception of the state as a "body" and the use of state power as essential to its "life". Hence the conceived relationship between biopower, eugenics
and state racism
.
With the concept of "biopower", which first appears in courses concerning the discourse of "race struggle", Foucault develops a holistic account of power, in opposition to the classic understanding of power as basically negative, and akin to censorship
. Sexuality, he argues, far from having been reduced to silence during the Victorian Era
, was in fact subjected to a "sexuality dispositif" (or "mechanism"), which incites and even forced the subject
to speak about their sex. Thus, "sexuality does not exist", it is a discursive creation, which makes us believe that sexuality contains our personal truth (in the same way that the discourse of "race struggle" sees the truth of politics and history in the everlasting subterranean war which takes place beneath the so-called peace).
Furthermore, the exercise of power in the service of maximizing life carries a dark underside. When the state is invested in protecting the life of the population, when the stakes are life itself, anything can be justified. Groups identified as the threat to the existence of the life of the nation or of humanity can be eradicated with impunity. "If genocide
is indeed the dream of modern power, this is not because of the recent return to the ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of the population."
(1857–1942) in his book Bipolitics . Originally used in the 19th century, it had already been used by various thinkers from Europe the German school of Geopolitics
;Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén
mentions it in a two-volume book from 1905. and from British sources Walter Bagehot
who wrote Physics and Politics in the late 19th century and gives an explanatory and tentative introduction to the term. And the brilliant but relatively unknown Biologist
, founder of Semiology, Jakob von Uexküll
, whose unknown pioneering work is most worthy of a mention. Foucault would have known about von Uexkull due to his close working association with Jean Hyppolite
,Georges Canguilhem
,Maurice Merleau-Ponty
,Gaston Bachelard
. Whether Foucault already knew about the term, or whether he thought it was brand new to him or his audience is unknown. But it seems that the concept pre-dates his use of the term by at least 70 years or more when he started to introduce the concept to his audience from his lectures. A further look at Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France it appears, with further scrutiny, that Foucault is bluffing or can lead to charges (from his critics) of fraudulent claims and exaggerations regarding history. However, this is inaccurate, misleading and a misreading of Foucault previous works. There is a distinct difference and division amongst his earlier works which were produced while he was still giving lectures at the Collège de France. Foucault was giving lecture courses their for over 14 years until his untimely death in 1984. It is almost as if there were two Foucaults, one giving intricate lectures at the Collėge de France and one the published writer trying to give tentative insights towards a better understanding of our times. Claims of this nature in itself are an exaggeration, especially as those who make the claim have never read nor have they ever attended any of his lectures. The whole point of his lectures was further areas of investigative research, not final absolute timeless textual conclusions. From the lectures themselves, with closer scrutiny, they appear slow, ponderous and at times disjointed; lacking any clarity and textual continuity however, a closer look proves this to be incorrect, what rescues the lectures is the excellent translations provided by Graham Burchill (Foucault's translator during the whole series of his lectures). The synergy between biopolitics and biopower appears here with much more clarity and the theory on power which Foucault describes, as opposed to the classical version, shows itself as a migratory, transitory, mutation
, stochastic
system as opposed to a passive all persuasive and culpable genetically determined biology within the 'body' which is often presented, in both these lectures although it is highly technical, however, it isn't overwhelming, Foucault originally wanted to entitle his work on biopower, governmentality
, which was first introduced by Foucault's courses in his fourth lecture at the Collėge de France on 1 February 1978, meaning several different approach research areas; such as, political power
, and its uses and relationship within modern society, political philosophy
, the uses of Ancient Greek
text and their pursuit of political communication and political persuasion of an audience, political sovereignty where the point of departure from the singular ruler through monarchical rule and political economy
through the organisation of modern production which would prove to be paradoxical because the ‘subjects’ of ‘right’ appear within political sovereignty of whom it is directly aimed at, the population; which the government must manage. Political science
the point of justification for governmentality and a new kind of governmental reason the fundamental organizational framework for biopolitics according to Foucault studying this type of liberalism reveals the technology of how this is accomplished. A further look at the concept at the same time that Foucault gave his lectures at the Collėge de France there was other investigations which verify Foucault's investigations.
According to Albert Somit (the current editor of Research In Biopolitics series and leading theorist and scholar on biopolitics
), by 1972 the literature of biopolitics contained at least some 40 different items. And by the time that Foucault used the phrase in his famous lectures at the Collège de France
between January and April 1979, according to Somit, there were several different approaches to the concept of biopolitics.: 1. The case for a biologically oriented political science. 2. The ethological aspects of political behavior. 3. Physiological and psychopharmaceutical aspects of political behaviour. 4. Issues of public policy raised by recent advances in biology. Foucault then offers from his lectures his conclusions from both the schools of thought of the twentieth century from this time; neo-liberalism, German ordoliberalism (the Freiburg School
) and the Chicago school (sociology)
.
Foucault then takes on the concept into a different direction by positioning it between biological processes, the control of human populations through political means government, management and (through work and the labor force) of whole human populations (bio) and politics (polis), essentially this is Foucault's meaning of biopolitics; human biology and its amalgamation with politics. Foucault then situates liberalism's take on society where liberalism sees the state and society as a societal organism (neoliberalism never mentions it in any of their narratives nor is it ever mentioned by name as it is automatically assumed by liberalism that state organization was automatically, ingrained in the human psyche in the guise of an invisible organic whole called the body politic
, where all humans are involved regardless of their class position) capable of producing, multiplying, reproducing and if necessary, having a destructive capability. Foucault's disciples (Giorgio Agamben
), etc. offer a chilling account and new meaning to this biopower and its destructive capability; the so called Thanatopolitics,the systematic slaughtering of millions of people from the population, through the use of political power via the military machine which produced the politics of death an intersection between biopolitics a conception of that individualizing power which constructs the subjectivity of subjects, which has the power to make live and let die from the indivdual's perspective, which contrasts differently from the sovereign power (the executive power), which has the power to right to live and make die. Where the sword of Damocles is quite literally held over society's head where: "an absolutization of the biopower to make live intersected with the absolute generalization of the sovereign
power to make die." Consequently, even the deaths of those in Auschwitz
, Belsen
concentration camps were literally death camps of organized slaughter for the helpless civilians of World War II what these brutal deaths signified a stark, brutish and cruel reality; "The power in thanatopolitics rests in the degradation of death, where in Auschwitz people did not die, rather corpses were produced, corpses without death, non-humans whose decease is debased into a matter of serial production." This kind of senseless butchery and murder can be justified both politically and morally (rather paradoxically) through the justice system (the so-called Nuremberg Trials
) without any recourse to 'justice', made to be internalized as collective consciousness encoded as memory through shared common experience Remembrance Day
, Armistice Day
for example, where it is frowned upon if you don't wear a poppy
particularly if you are a high-profile statesman
(a politician), or a celebrity in public appearances on television this is then effectively passed on to future generations in the guise of ceremonies, monuments and memorials. The purpose of this intersection and cross amalgamation is twofold;first it serves as a warning to future generations "watch it you could be next" fear is its ultimate purpose through the aegis of the victor. Secondly, it serves as a deterrent to future events, but can also be resurrected and act as a rallying cry for the next conflict into the future. A crime or a singular event of horrendous proportions serves as a template (such as the holocaust for example) this crime or event had to have a label something to attach itself to, or more importantly something to apportion blame. The term genocide
, coined by lawyer Raphael Lemkin
serves as good example which forms memory, memory meaning here of no origin you are required to remember the word and learn its meaning, not its origin. However, amidst all the carnage and slaughter Foucault gives us a reminder of those who took part in the blood shed by the users of those who control and are ultimately responsible for the productive resources operations, through no fault of their own, in order to replicate themselves as consumers through being in the unfortunate position of belonging to the unprecedented production and reproduction system in human history; the work force. The industrial working population which comprises the overwhelming majority of human populations anywhere in the world, in a wider context unwittingly there must be at least seen, essentially a systematic position however clandestinely operated, without disruption taking place of economic productivity and activity which still has to take place in a smooth, transitory and unfussy way this then takes on a new meaning Foucault offers us a chilling reminder of those who take part, through no fault of their own, in this involuntary naive complicity he introduces to us the concept of Homo economicus
(economic man)
This descriptive discovery of Homo oeconomicus allowed the removal of the sovereign from economic affairs and allowed a societal conception of economic process ; the so-called 'invisible hand
' of the market coined by Adam Smith
to be 'rationally' justified politically (it is no secret that from this period of the 18th century political representation for the industrial working population in the form of representative democracy was coming to social prominence ), this would, while paradoxically, maximise the eventual target of economic liberalism for government permanently intervention to produce, multiply, and guarantee the freedoms required by economic liberalism. Foucault then briefly touches on B F Skinner; (the founder of radical behaviorism
), and Robert Castel
but unfortunately it is very brief however, in Foucault's defence, he himself does admit 'there is little literature' available in France on these techniques, however, to be critical, Foucault did belong to the most prestigious academic institutions in Europe (Collège de France
) with unprecedented access to many journals in France and it would be unlikely that they would be unavailable to him. This is a slight point to make but a valid one when considering that he was effectively the 'master of the archive' and was brilliant at excavating 'obscure material' Foucault concentrates more on neo-liberalism's political justification for state existence, rather than Skinner's techniques on controlling human behavior through controlling the mind Manuel Castells
while operating in the field of social science dares to venture outside the limited field of social science which he noticed in his brilliant work Communication Power where
It is clear then that any standard neuroscience journal will show you this, it is not the body but the mind
, as is often thought by Foucault and the postmodernism
movement, both thought that the body (not the mind), an often repeated mistake a simple mistake, but a crucial one. To get to the body the mind had to be rendered docile, not the body, this error is due to the standard social science model an incorrect view which still persist to this day, that the mind and body, the so called mind–body problem, or in philosophical circles dualism
were separate and somehow in conflict with one another which needed to be controlled (within whole populations rendering populations docile) which was what Foucault's original concept of biopower was primarily concerned with. While Foucault's concept of biopower is both evocative thought-provoking (and in some cases somewhat controversial in some quarters) and powerful it is this slight mistake which shouldn't postpone more research on the subject. The biggest challenge to Foucault's sympathetic disciples and independent researchers is this: Can they penetrate (as it stands now) the in-amenable impenetrable discourse that has been erected around the modern 'rational' nation state (rational choice theory
, sociobiology
, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology
, evolutionary stable strategy, political science
and foundationalism
). In doing so can they decode (which the above mention 'social sciences' cannot) the modern power structure and show how it is encoded and woven into these various different cultural social practices and techniques that has been used as a discourse which has been presented over several millennium where explanation of the state is placed on a rational sober footing? Exactly like the natural sciences, as opposed to the Social Sciences where claims can be reduced to fact, rigorous approach is seen as hard work, not polemicist point scoring and guess work. It is certainly not insurmountable where for once there is no room for doubt moving from the shaky and fragile process of descriptive narrative to the sound and solid method of explanation. That is the fundamental challenge that any future theorist should now face.
have just been translated and published, however, there are still seven volumes to be published to the English-speaking audience. The main focus of this section in the article are from the years 1977-1978 and 1978-1979 (see below). Foucault tries to trace the 'government of things' (as he refers to it) with its direct collaboration and correlation to modern society as it is today; starting from Niccolo Machiavelli
with The Prince
in 1513, where Foucault noticed that there wasn't unanimous reception over the prince. The anti-Machiavellian literature wanted to replace the ability of the prince to hold on to his principality with something entirely new: an art of government. Foucault then notices that this art of government were internal to society itself, not external, this type of self government was practiced right throughout European society; such as Italy, Germany, France, etc. which was seized upon by the modern nation state from which it took up as its central practices. This is from as early as the 16th century which in due course enabled the elimination of the sovereign
prince as a transcendental, singularity figure of Machiavelli's prince. All of society was enmeshed within this process including the prince (ruler) himself, thus a century later government became political and collaborative with economy (modern political science
as its 'rational' spokesman) and its partnership with political economy
. Foucault further notices that political economy had a new tool called statistics (another term for scientific government) and it is with François Quesnay
that this process can be found the very notion of economic government. So, according to a text quoted by Foucault written by Guillaume de La Perrière
"government is the right disposition of things arranged so as to lead a suitable end." To clarify this matter further there was a general shift in this notion of 'political power' and its relationship with territory, Machiavelli's principality and judicial sovereignty (which we now know as 'legalism') as defined by political philosophers and legal theorists of the day. Statistics was just a tactic to this new kind of political power, for Foucault statistics doesn't mean counting, it means the large population which can be expanded at will within the new territory, the modern idea of this is globalisation which rather differs somewhat from Marx's conception of surplus value with its ultimate aim to produce surplus population. Which simply means more human resources, larger government, bigger revenues for the state and a better 'scientific' approach to ordering of the state. Foucault talks quite a lot on the Christian pastorate, which was unheard of in the ancient world of the Greeks and the Romans, and primarily belongs to Christianity. For Foucault the work on this is unfinished business but however, it is pivotal to Foucault's understanding of how it was possible in the past of ancient society and now modern society how they were able (both ancient and modern) to produce docile populations through the government of souls to the government of men politically, he gives an outline of just what he was able to come with in his research. First of all the shepherd flock relationship was alien to the Greeks as a political model and was an entirely a Christian invention which migrated in a modern sense as shepherd, sheep, flock relationship, which means, roughly translated in modern terms as the political electorate and the political . Political community means the institutions that are governing the rest of society; government covered by legal institutions which gives both the political electorate, political executive and political community legitimacy, Foucault traces this practice to the ancient Greek text from the Pythagoreans known as nomas (meaning the law) and according to this text the shepherd is the lawmaker, he directs the flock, indicates the right direction and says how the sheep must mate to have good offspring. Foucault then reads into Robert Castel
's work; The Psychiatric Order, an essential read according to Foucault, where the techniques were finally finalised during the 18th century of this absolute global project which was directed towards the whole of society. Which was public hygiene and a whole battery of other techniques were used concerning the education of children, assistance to the poor, and through the psychiatric order, the institution of workers tutelage was coordinated through psychiatric practices. These technologies of power, Foucault claims, were introduced into the 18th century emerging prison system which migrated into the modern surveillance society through the infamous system that Jeremy Bentham
tried to introduce, the Panopticon
; the modern internal and external surveillance system that modern society inhabits 'self watch' and 'self government'. Foucault then interprets this self-government as modern society conception of a top-down hierarchy, creating the delusion of a sovereign who rules in perpetual in the United Kingdom for example, this system still exists today through the ancient and legal maxim the king never dies, according to Sir William Blackstone
, the king survives in his successor and the right of the crown vests, eo instanti upon his heirs. Thus, according to Blackstone, which still exists in actual British legal legislator, not as legal theory but as legal reality and part of legitimacy for the monarch as well as the monarch keeping his/her own private written records of conversation and advice to ministers, they are considered secret, by her many advisors and cannot be released to the public. She is considered as immortal and has absolute right to council, privately it should be added (through the system known as Privy Council of the United Kingdom
) the monarch's own personal opinion will never beknown which is absolute from which there is no moment in time where the throne is vacant. Where the full focal point of a ruler of the system is a self perpetuating and self regularity (among those who inhabit the system), where clearly defined roles are defined and repeated right throughout the system(through norms). The system can readjust itself to whatever is thrown at it (an internal firewall integral to the system where the dangerous individual can be spotted and isolated at will). This was accomplished, according to Foucault, (rather paradoxically) from power relations elsewhere from other institutions in order to analyse them from the point of view of other technologies to free them elsewhere to form new systematic institutions as new knowledge objects. Foucault traces this original practice to government practices of the Middle Ages, where the term government meant an entirely different definition as modern society knows it. For example 'enough wheat to govern Paris for two years', this covers a wide semantic view, it also refers to control of one's body, soul and behaviour, conduct, diet, the care given to an individual. Which Foucault very often refers to as 'governmentality', self conduct or self government. Foucault traces this tactic back through history to the east (Mediterranean East, Egypt, Assyrian Empire, Babylonian etc.) which was specific to those societies. In Foucault own words this very aspect of Foucault's own work is still a work in progress, and is not a finalised research. However, Foucault situates this type of pastoral power squarely onto the new founded Christian Church where an organized religion ruled an entire society politically for 1500 years. And what was produced or outcome of all this turbulence was constant battles of supremacy for this type of pastoral power, government over men and their souls. The Church rapidly colonised this type of new power between 11th and 18th century, and according to Foucault, the church laid claim to the daily government of men in their real lives on the grounds of their salvation and no example of this exist anywhere in history of societies. Furthermore, Foucault research goes on to show that all the religious struggles from this period were fundamentally struggles over who would actually have the right to govern men, and to govern men in their daily lives they were practically struggles over who had the right to this power. Foucault then derives from this that from the 11th to the 18th century all the struggles of religion (wars of religion) were fundamentally struggles over who would actually have the right to govern men, and to govern men in their daily lives and in details and materiality of their existence; they were struggles over who has this power, from whom it derives, how it is exercised, the margin of autonomy for each, the qualification of those who exercise it, the limits of their jurisdiction, what recourse is possible against them, and what control is exercised over each. The Protestant Reformation
traversed this relationship of pastorate power and what resulted from the reformation, although an historical event, was a formidable reinforcement of the pastorate system of religious power (political power in modern societies). This type of religious power (pastoral power) was simply a reorganization of pastoral power from within, but, however, this type of reorganization of pastoral power encroached on the sovereigns (ruler) political power at the same time, it wasn't a smooth transition as is often portrayed. This led to a succession of tumultuous upheavals and revolts over this period, 11th-18th century; Norman Conquest, English Civil War
, The Anarchy
, Hundred Years' War
, Crusades
, Peasants' Revolt
, Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
, popular revolt in late medieval Europe
. All of which are well attested too, Foucault refers to these revolts as revolts against conduct, the most radical of which were the Protestant reformation. Foucault then concludes that this political process can be traced to the general context of resistances, revolts and great insurrections of conduct (Peasants' Revolt of 1524-1526 for example).
(known as the balance of power); this can be found in the works of Italian political philosopher Giovanni Botero
where Botero concluded that the state is a firm domination over peoples and to keep hold of its preservation one was expected to have knowledge of the appropriate means for founding preserving, and expanding such a domination. This political philosophy of raison d'état was made as the chief political philosophy (with its accompanied rationality) in mainland Europe. Foucault's analysis of raison d'état (here Bogislaw Philipp von Chemnitz son of Martin von Chemnitz) writing under the pseudonym Hippolithus a Lapide first starts to query the first uses of the doctrine of raison d'état at the Treaty of Westphalia, where among the diplomatic community the doctrine starts to become popular for discussion) offers interesting conclusions of this new type of power the transition of the government of souls to the government of men. This first takes place between 13th century and the 18th century, from the 16th century the subject starts to appear of an idea of perpetual peace taken from the Middle Ages idea. Which primarily belonged to the church, from the 16th century therefore, exists the idea of a 'balance of power', with few exceptions, this idea became problematic, it started or rather had to included the populace. The solution to this problematic situation was the inclusion, within the philosophy of raison d'état, the incorporation of the populace which the machinery of the state had to govern. The government of men as Foucault refers to it, directly from the pastorate community to the transfer to the political community. Foucault then further shows that raison d'état wasn't much concerned with legality (as we know the term) but with political necessity; politics is concerned with necessity and if necessary politics must become violent lending to coup d'état
; this means that it is obliged to sacrifice, to sever, cause harm, and it is led to be unjust and murderous. This produced a whole series of problematic solutions to this problem, of which the population became of primary concern, coup d'état politics isn't the practice as we know it today. Under the auspices of the Renaissance
wasn't primarily concerned with legitimacy, but survival of the state. Foucault then tries to show only when the problem of population and security starts taking effect amongst the different practices that the consideration of population becomes a worry. Foucault then notices a point of departure pointing out the idea of sedition and revolt starts to enter texts, but 'the people' proved elusive to define all around Europe, and never entered popular discussion, at first point of juncture was the nobles and their rivals began to become known as 'the people'. Which was the fundamental departure between Machiavelli and Francis Bacon
, the former was concerned with governing the prince's principality, the later concerned with 'the people' as a populace.
of the 16th century. Where a substantial transfer of techniques and technologies were transferred from the sovereign individual (the monarch) to a new modified apparatus such as; the Carceral archipelago, Discipline and Punish
(all in the space of 80 years Foucault's notices) which culminated into a new version known as nation states. This change took place in the 16th century and continued right through into the 19th century. Foucault then gives examples of this procedure through the system known as raison d'état, from this analytical view of the state by Claude Fleury
, war, raising finance, justice; there must be an abundance of men (large scale phenomena of population). It is not the absolute number of the population that counts, but its relationship with the set composition of forces: the size of the territory, natural resources, wealth, commercial activities and so on. From Fleury's point of view, according to Foucault, the more there are of men, the stronger the state and the prince will be. So, according to Fleury, it is not expanse of land (expansion of the territory) that contributes greatness of the state but fertility and the number of men. Foucault then introduces into his ontology
investigations into the concept of 'police'; not the police of the criminal justice system as we know it today, but as concept known at that time as urbanization of the territory; which means making the kingdom, the entire territory into a large industrious town. Foucault then considers how Mercantilism
played a big role in this new context of European balance of power; these are the mercantilist requirements: every country should try to have the largest possible population, second; the entire population be endgible and be put to work, third; wages given to the population be as low as possible, fourth; the cost price of goods at the lowest price as possible. Police according to Foucault consists of a sovereign exercise of royal power over individuals who are therefore subjects. The actual police is the direct governmentality of the sovereign who rules through raison d'état. What Foucault means by the governmentality of the sovereign is the mind of the police runs through all of the populations, collective consciousness therefore, reducing criminality (not its complete elimination), for political and economic reasons see Discipline and Punish
), not through fear, but the knowledge of the police as a system with its own structural objective as laws, judicial, legislative operating as a microcosm of the societal body, which ultimately represents the sovereigns will. Initially, however, this wasn’t the sole intention of the police as we know it where Foucault introduces the original founder of the system now known to us as the police.Nicolas Delamare,(Foucault doesn’t mention the real founder of the police Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie
which Foucault neglects to mention). Foucault concentrates on how the police became an integral feature and intermingled with population, tracing the system on its foundation on how this is arranged around the composition of forces which the whole Western system of the balance of power, raison E’tat was organised and arranged around. This system consisted of an organised professional army,(as opposed to a private army organised around the service of the king) incorporated within this military system is Thantopolitics(Political power
by other means) for the purposes of the slaughtering of millions, a system of legitimacy, comprising the sovereign, not the sovereign as a singular ruler but as an organized institution comprising societal state functions, Political sovereignty which guaranteed the sovereign's legitimacy, judiciary, legislator, Parliamentary system; political power, political executive, political elite, and a political communication system which is primarily aimed at the entire political community. And finally, the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle;the western political system of Consent of the governed
. This system at least gives the rational of why it was necessary to have on board a widely disparate populace; and its use, through the not widely known and little understood function of the Royal Prerogative
. The origin of which can be traced back to the Middle Ages from where the western system of political power gets its central idea, from the point of view and simple justification of consent of the governed, legitimacy and political power. This legitimacy, which is exercised through the use of Parliamentary democracy(see also Greek government debt crisis
, National unity government
, European sovereign debt crisis), was essential to the western system of political power and modern government;"The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government","The people" identifies the entire body of the citizens of a jurisdiction invested with political power or gathered for political purposes'" or "Popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people is the political principle that the legitimacy of the state is created by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power", all of this Foucault calls the political technology of biopower. This had to have the entire population on board in terms of ‘the police’, which had an entirely different meaning from what we know it today by tracing the concept back through time from the 15th century and 16th century usage, previous thinkers meant the term as a community association governed by a public authority and political power with accountability to a public authority. By quoting Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi
“of laws and regulations that concern the interior of a state and which endeavours to strengthen and increase the power of this state and make good use of its forces.”What Foucault reveals is that the original police had a different function as we know it today;for example one of their primary function was to administer the state in the guise of statisticians, allocating resources, supervision of grain in times of crisis, ensuring circulation of goods and men, secure the development of the state’s forces. This was so successful this then led to an extension of the franchising out in the form of recruitment of the then University
system. This bought in the next generation of administrators of the new ‘nation state’ system. This bought in two types of police;administrators who formed the Polizeiwissenschaft
(the science of police, the other type would become known as Polizeistaat police state, i.e. policing of the state), originally from Germany, this system spread right throughout Europe from the middle of the 17th century and most crucially, this Polizeiwissenschaft grow a substantial bibliography of this system ‘science of police’ by the 19th century, Foucault’s research shows that some 4000 different pamphlets and articles had emerged from 1520-1850 under the titles of “science of police in the broad sense” and “science of the police in the strict sense”. This became known as Cameral science(the new modern Public administration
). The future administrators for the future modern nation state system with many functions;such as Bureaucrats, Civil Servants, Think tanks, Public policy
makers, Economists all from the university system.
, according to Foucault, was the first rationalization of the exercise of power as a practice of government; it is the first time that a knowledge of the state can be employed as tactics for the state, namely statistics. Foucault begins to chart through this historical, political reasoning behind the doctrine raison d'état (reason of state). The time of the Middle Ages where the idea existed of an indefinite permanent character of political power and government. This perpetual discourse, the idea of progress in men's knowledge about themselves and towards others, however, one thing was internally missing from this analysis, namely the notion of population. Foucault traces the conceptual discourse of the populace back to the Middle Ages definition of the pastorate which to the Middle Ages mind meant salvation, obedience and truth. First of all the discourse of raison d'état and salvation; Foucault manages to trace conceptually the system of salvation through the 17th century usage of coup d'état politics. Foucault notices that entire treatise were devoted to the very notion of coup d'état, for example a text written in 1639 by Gabriel Naude
, entitled Considerations sur les coups d'etat and writing in 1631 Foucault sites Jean Sirmond
Le Coup d’Estat de Louis XIII. For at the beginning of the 17th century the term "coup d'état" did not in any way signify someone's seizure of the state at the cost of those who had previously held it and are dispossessed. The general opinion of the day (17th century) in political thought was a suspension of, or a departure from laws and legality. William King
's 1711 translation of Gabriel Naude's work with which coup d'état is translated as "master stroke of state". There was a whole series of different meanings, not in a series of different ways of governing the state, but finding a way or system of legality or legitimacy which by no way was homogeneous. Salvation here means not 'the people' or the ones being governed, but the salvation of the state, its legitimacy and those who have to respect the law. Coup d'état politics was a technical device to ensure legality, legitimacy of the sovereign and legality of the laws of territory and those who were to be governed through raison d'état and is fundamental with regards to those laws, but it makes use of this in its usual functioning precisely because it deems them necessary or useful. In Foucault's analysis of this aspect of salvation of the state it is necessary that the state should push aside the civil, moral, and natural laws that it previously wanted to recognize and had to incorporate it into its legal structural system. Foucault's conclusion is that the modern nation state can be traced back to these very ancient, historical practices of which coup d'état and therefore, is an assertion of raison d'état and a self-manifestation of the state. The state itself is above any law, and must remain so, not if it wants to maintain its own salvation.
's main intention where the political representation (modern representation of this is media visual representation of political power, political consultants, image makers (media consultants), and 'power politics' and its constant fixation with voting and leading political personalities) of the sovereign Henry V
for example was a part of historical drama, although based on real people and events, but for all intents and purposes was political representation in the form of plots, intrigues, disgraces, preferences, exclusions, good guys and bad guys and political exiles, where the theatre represents the state itself. Foucault now turns his attention to obedience and the population and why this was a problem among political theorists of the times. He then produces Francis Bacon
's text "Of Seditions and Troubles". In this essay Bacon gives a complete description on the physics of sedition, sedition and the precautions to be taken against it, and of government of the 'people'. This became a worry for Bacon and other political theorists; the first signs of sedition were circulation of libels, pamphlets and discourse against the state and those who govern. Second, Bacon notices the reversal of values or evaluations which puts the existence at risk. Weakness in the chain of command. Foucault reads into Bacon the theory of revolt of the people and there are two categories of individuals within the state, the common people (very often referred in text as Peasants, the People
, the Common people
, the poor, or at times Vagabond
vagrants) and the nobility, what differentiates the common people and the nobility is their unshared interest. They do not have any common interest between the two groups in Bacon's view the common people are too slow to engage in revolt and sedition. But if the common people and the nobility ever unite and become one unit they represent a threat to the sovereign's rule. A slow people and a weak nobility (because of their small number) mean that sedition can be prevented and discontents stopped from contaminating each other. Bacon then views the process of the danger of sedition where you can either buy the nobility or you can execute them. The problem of the common people becomes a different matter, they are not easily bought. So Bacon himself offers a whole series of measures and reforms that should be implemented, reducing the rate of interest, avoiding excessively large estates, increased wages, promoting external trade increasing the value of raw materials through work, and assuring provisions of transport to foreign countries. While the differences between Bacon and Machiavelli appear subtle, it was 250 years later that the political model of reforms changed, why? Foucault wasn't much interested into the notion of reform as 'cure', but what was behind the underlying mechanism that was driving the system of reform ensuring reforms become a permanent feature of 'failure'. Foucault begins to trace through this development through the political model of reform and one crucial development was the economy, a politics of economic calculation with Mercantilism and for Foucault this was not just a theory but was above all else a political practice. The invention of the political campaign which Foucault traces back through its original modern founder, Cardinal Richelieu, who according to Foucault actually invented the modern political campaign by means of lampoons and pamphlets and more importantly, invented those professional manipulators of opinion who were called at the time publicistes.Thus, for Foucault raison d'état must always act on the collective consciousness of the population, not only to impose some true or false belief on them, as when, for example, sovereigns want to create belief in their own legitimacy or in illegitimacy of their rivals, but in such away that the collective opinion can be modified along with their behaviour as economic and political subjects. The main function of public opinion is to produce a politics of believable truth within raison d'état. The most obvious example of all this is that propaganda,in its political sense has a twofold objective: 1, The main function of public opinion is to produce a emergence, alliance between political propaganda and a belief system of politics of truth within collective consciousness, a version of political continuity within raison d’Etat, this practice of political reform gets passed on to future generations ensuring failure. 2, The other main political purposes of propaganda is to make sure that the chaos of modern living becomes accepted as the norm therefore, rendering whole swathes of society useless (through cultural practices), in its objectives to do anything about it. You can do something about it, but only within the rules of a political tool, even within the confines of political buffoons who appear to have no hold or control of the system that they are in charge of. This tool is soiled and cannot be used for practical change but its power comes from those who gives comfort to those who use it in the hope of a false belief of change can happen leaving the practicalities of the system as ‘real’ events. This, Foucault notices produced two consensus correlations namely;birth of economists, birth of the ‘’publicistes’’ known as economy and public opinion the two correlative elements of field of reality that is emerging as the direct correlate of government.
, the Freiburg School
which produced general problems among themselves, namely the state apparatus and its reconstruction after the Second World War. This general theme led to neo-liberalism heavy reliances on the law obviously, but it too, had to produce a new kind of consensus and a rearrangement consensus between the general populace; the working population, those engaged in production. This general or collective consensus produced 'economic partners' in this so called 'economic game', such as; investors, employers, government officials, work force, and trade union officials. Foucault then offers some explanation on what was the reasoning behind this consensus between all these so called different economic partners. According to Foucault this produced another kind of consensus, which was political power of the electoral community, not the political power of the right to vote, but the right of the political community to exchange seats, a rearrangement of the very relations of the so called change of 'government' which gives and protects legitimacy. Which becomes political consensus, inasmuch as the 'economic partners 'accept the economic game of freedom. This is very much on neo-liberalism agenda, which according to Foucault was exactly the agenda that neo-liberalism required. A strong Deutschmark, a satisfactory rate of economic growth, increased wages, an expanding purchasing power, and a favorable balance of payments which became a by product of the effects of good government. Foucault then reads into this that in contemporary German which was in reality a founding consensus of the state. Foucault then notices that this formation of a liberal type of governmentality had general shifts within this circle which can be traced back to the 18th century old or classical liberalism programmed by the Physiocrats
, Turgot, and the other economists of the 18th century, for whom the problem was the exact opposite. The problem that neo-liberalism had to resolve was the following: given the existence of a legitimate state, which is fully functional under the police state (see Security, Territory, Population) with all its administration form of police state, how can this be limited within the existing state and, above all, allow for the necessary economic freedom within it. For Foucault this was the exact opposite because after the Second World War, the war machine that was unleashed was due to the fact that the system of economic rationality had completely broken down and the organisational network of world trade (world trade starting period 1870) and its accompanied trade settlement system had completely become untenable in which trust in the payment settlement system had completely vanished, therefore initiating the military machine and the Carl von Clausewitz
dream "War is the continuation of politics by other means" precipitating the systematic slaughtering of millions.
was at its peak) where a coherence strategy established a intellgible mechanism which provided a coherent link, together these different practices and their effects, and consequently allows one to judge all these practices as good or bad, not in terms of a law or moral principle, but in terms of propositions subject to the false dichotomy between true and false. Governments, Foucault noticed, were compelled to enter this competitive environment, by doing so entering into new regimes of truth with the fundamental effect of reconfiguring all the questions formally beset by the art of government. Foucault now turns his attention to ordoliberalism
's view on social policy and how this can be woven into society's political power which differentates from Adam Smith
's liberalism two centuries earlier. This problem was faced head on by ordoliberalism; how can the overall exercise of political power be modeled on the principles of a market economy? To accomplish this the old version of classic liberalism had to be subjected to a whole series of modifications. The first set of transformations was the dissociation of the market economy from the political principle of laissez-faire
, this uncoupling of the market and laissez-faire was replaced with, not abandon by a theory of pure competition which produced a formal structure and formal properties which could lay the fundamental principle of the compective structure that assured economic regulation through the price mechanism. This break from traditional liberalism principles, founded by Walter Lippmann
and expressed by such others as Jacques Rueff
, Wilhelm Röpke
, Alexander Rüstow
, Friedrich Hayek
, Robert Marjolin
, Ludwig von Mises
, and their intermediaries and a non-economist, but however was highly influential, Raymond Aron
. All of these people set up a committee, a highly influential think tank called CERL they produced a set of interesting pamphlets which were produced throughout the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s which wanted to established the principles of economic liberalism and the price mechanism, by maintaining a contractual regime of production and exchange which did not exclude intervention arising from the duties of the state, and according to them, contrast differently from the so called 'planned economy' of the former Soviet Union
. How would neo-liberalism define the new governmental action? Foucault traces three examples which neo-liberalism call a conformable economic action; firstly the question of monopolies which they claimed differed somewhat from classic liberalism. The classic conception of the economy as the monopoly seen as somehow semi-neutral, semi-necessary consequence of the competition in a capitalist system. The neo-liberal dream of competition cannot be left to develop without monopolistic phenomena appearing at the same time which precisely have the effect of limiting attenuating and given nullifying competition. This would eventually have the effect, of suppressing the operation of mechanism that facilitate, bring with them, and hopefully determine its eventual destiny. However, Foucault notices specific problems began to emerge for neo-liberalism, not only specific to neo-liberalism was how to incorporate civil society, political power; and Homo oeconomicus
into a non-substitutable, irreducible atom of interest. Foucault makes the starting point of his investigations into this process from the 18th century where Homo oeconomicus (this problem still persists to this day) has to be integrated into the system of which he is a part, and this is crucial, into the economic domain, not by transfer, subtraction, or dialectic of renunciation, but by a dialectic of spontaneous multiplication.
the theory of right of that legal theorists of the 18th century tried to establish during their legal discourse) which did receive a great deal of attention because of what was perceived at the time of problems regarding the sovereign's power. The subject of right had to perform slight modifications because of the implication of him (the subject of right) limiting the sovereign's power. Which certainly differed from classical liberalism's conception of the sovereign power, which from the 16th century was conceived of as impenetrable to any rational discourse. The sovereign was conceived of as absolute, but the discovery of the people, subject of rights, homo oeconomicus, changed all that because of the arrival of market practices (the market system of capitalism) from the 18th century. Even the Physiocrats insisted that the market, the sovereign had to really respect the market. How could this new problematic of liberalism, the sovereign, the market, and the new-found political power, homo oeconomicus which economic activity had at least specific patterns of correlation could be moulded into one tight unit? Foucault seeks the answer to this with a new field of reference, civil society
. Foucault answers this question on the process of how to govern through governmental technology, the new neo-liberals, economic liberals sought to have a heterogeneity of the economic and the judicial which must be pegged to an economy understood as process of production and exchange. Foucault then tries to enhanced the general theme and tries to show the mixed conflagration of the legal and economic theorists and those who propagate the theory of right (consent of the governed) through political philosophy and political science which was a battle for a judicial political project. Civil society
, according to Foucault's analysis, must place particular attention to its correlation of technology of government, the rational measure of which must be judicially pegged to an economy understood as the process of production and exchange. What made this version of civil society tick? Foucault makes the amalgamation of civil society into society (as we know it) which at the end of the 18th century became known as the nation (now known to us as the nation state). This became omnipresent, nothing was allowed to escape, which was to conform to the rules of right (consent of the governed), and a government which nevertheless respects the specificity of the economy, will be a government that manages civil society, the nation, society, and the social. Foucault continues the theme on Homo oeconomicus which became part and parcel to this feature, Homo oeconomicus and civil society were two inseparable features and belonged to the same ensemble of the technology of liberal governmentality. For Foucault this was no mere coincidence, since the 19th century, civil society has always been referred to in political philosophy
discourse as a fixed reality, which according to this theory, was outside of government or the state or state apparatuses or institutions. This omnipresent has many characteristics and one its main features are a primary and immediate reality which forms part of modern governmental technology. Foucault views this governmental characteristic as simply the direct correlation of modern society's direct association with madness, disease, sexuality, criminal recidivism and criminal delinquency which he calls transactional realities. Although civil society, along with its associated governmental technologies haven't always existed they are nonetheless real, by real he simply means the power dynamic and their interplay with the rest of society in which all those involved (which is pretty much all of society) everything within it constantly eludes them, at the interface so to speak of those who are governed and those who govern. It is in Foucault's insightful analysis where he makes four important points on this governmental modern technology of biopolitics; an absolute correlative to the form of governmental technology which liberalism associated itself with, and it is pegged, tied to the specificity of economic process. How were all three incorporated into rational liberalism philosophical discourse? Foucault cites the well-known texts of Adam Ferguson
: Essay on the History of Civil Society; from the 18th century to show how liberalism approached this problem from different angles and Adam Smith
and his own infamous text The Wealth of Nations
which complement one another with regards civil society. First: there is a political and social correlate in terms of civil society. Second, civil society as principle of spontaneous synthesis; third, civil society as permanent matrix of political power; and fourth, civil society as the motor element that drives human history.
Accessed 14 July 2011
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
it refers to the practice of modern states and their regulation of their subjects through "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations." Foucault first used the term in his lecture courses at the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
but the term first appeared in The Will To Knowledge, Foucault's first volume of The History of Sexuality
The History of Sexuality
The History of Sexuality is a three-volume series of books by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault written between 1976 and 1984...
. In Foucault's work, it has been used to refer to practices of public health, regulation of heredity, and risk regulation (François Ewald), among many other things often linked less directly with literal physical health. It is closely related to a term he uses much less frequently, but which subsequent thinkers have taken up independently, biopolitics
Biopolitics
The term "biopolitics" or "biopolitical" can refer to several different yet often compatible concepts.-Definitions:# In the work of Michel Foucault, the style of government that regulates populations through "biopower" .# In the works of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, anti-capitalist insurrection...
.
Foucault and the concept of biopower
For Foucault, biopower is a technologyTechnology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
of power
Power (sociology)
Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to...
, which is a way of managing people as a group. The distinctive quality of this political technology is that it allows for the control of entire populations. It is thus essential to the emergence of the modern nation state, modern capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, etc. Biopower is literally having power over other bodies, "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations". Foucault then goes on to further elaborate in his now famous lectures at the Collège de France between January and April 1978
It relates to the government's concern with fostering the life of the population, and centers on the poles of Disciplinary institutions
Disciplinary institutions
Disciplinary institutions is a concept proposed by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish . School, prison, barracks or the hospital are examples of historical disciplinary institutions, all created in their modern form in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution...
("an anatomo-politics of the human body") and regulatory controls ("a biopolitics of the population").
Biopower for Foucault contrasts differently with traditional modes of power based on the threat of death from a sovereign
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
. In an era where power must be justified both rationally and politically, biopower is utilized by an emphasis on the protection of life rather than the threat of death, on the regulation of the body, and the production of other technologies of power, such as the notion of sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
. Regulation of customs, habits, health, reproductive practices, family, "blood", and "well-being" would be straightforward examples of biopower, as would any conception of the state as a "body" and the use of state power as essential to its "life". Hence the conceived relationship between biopower, eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
and state racism
State racism
State racism is a concept used by French philosopher Michel Foucault to designate the reappropriation of the historical and political discourse of "race struggle", in the late seventeenth century....
.
With the concept of "biopower", which first appears in courses concerning the discourse of "race struggle", Foucault develops a holistic account of power, in opposition to the classic understanding of power as basically negative, and akin to censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
. Sexuality, he argues, far from having been reduced to silence during the Victorian Era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
, was in fact subjected to a "sexuality dispositif" (or "mechanism"), which incites and even forced the subject
Subject (philosophy)
In philosophy, a subject is a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness or a relationship with another entity . A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed...
to speak about their sex. Thus, "sexuality does not exist", it is a discursive creation, which makes us believe that sexuality contains our personal truth (in the same way that the discourse of "race struggle" sees the truth of politics and history in the everlasting subterranean war which takes place beneath the so-called peace).
Furthermore, the exercise of power in the service of maximizing life carries a dark underside. When the state is invested in protecting the life of the population, when the stakes are life itself, anything can be justified. Groups identified as the threat to the existence of the life of the nation or of humanity can be eradicated with impunity. "If genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
is indeed the dream of modern power, this is not because of the recent return to the ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of the population."
Pre-Foucault usage of 'biopolitics'
Although Michel Foucault is the name primarily associated with the concept of biopower and bio-politics, the term was in fact used tentatively in 1911 when the magazine The New Age published the article "Biopolitics" by G. W. Harris and then reused in 1938 by Morley RobertsMorley Roberts
Morley Roberts was an English novelist and short story writer, best known for The Private Life of Henry Maitland.-Early life:Roberts was born in London, the son of a superintending inspector of income tax...
(1857–1942) in his book Bipolitics . Originally used in the 19th century, it had already been used by various thinkers from Europe the German school of Geopolitics
Geopolitics
Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....
;Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén
Rudolf Kjellén
Johan Rudolf Kjellén was a Swedish political scientist and politician who first coined the term "geopolitics". His work was influenced by Friedrich Ratzel...
mentions it in a two-volume book from 1905. and from British sources Walter Bagehot
Walter Bagehot
Walter Bagehot was an English businessman, essayist, and journalist who wrote extensively about literature, government, and economic affairs.-Early years:...
who wrote Physics and Politics in the late 19th century and gives an explanatory and tentative introduction to the term. And the brilliant but relatively unknown Biologist
Biologist
A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
, founder of Semiology, Jakob von Uexküll
Jakob von Uexküll
Jakob Johann von Uexküll was a Estonian biologist who worked in the fields of muscular physiology, animal behaviour studies, and the cybernetics of life. However, his most notable contribution is the notion of umwelt, used by semiotician Thomas Sebeok...
, whose unknown pioneering work is most worthy of a mention. Foucault would have known about von Uexkull due to his close working association with Jean Hyppolite
Jean Hyppolite
Jean Hyppolite was a French philosopher known for championing the work of Hegel, and other German philosophers, and educating some of France's most prominent post-war thinkers....
,Georges Canguilhem
Georges Canguilhem
Georges Canguilhem was a French philosopher and physician who specialized in epistemology and the philosophy of science .-Life and work:...
,Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir...
,Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...
. Whether Foucault already knew about the term, or whether he thought it was brand new to him or his audience is unknown. But it seems that the concept pre-dates his use of the term by at least 70 years or more when he started to introduce the concept to his audience from his lectures. A further look at Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France it appears, with further scrutiny, that Foucault is bluffing or can lead to charges (from his critics) of fraudulent claims and exaggerations regarding history. However, this is inaccurate, misleading and a misreading of Foucault previous works. There is a distinct difference and division amongst his earlier works which were produced while he was still giving lectures at the Collège de France. Foucault was giving lecture courses their for over 14 years until his untimely death in 1984. It is almost as if there were two Foucaults, one giving intricate lectures at the Collėge de France and one the published writer trying to give tentative insights towards a better understanding of our times. Claims of this nature in itself are an exaggeration, especially as those who make the claim have never read nor have they ever attended any of his lectures. The whole point of his lectures was further areas of investigative research, not final absolute timeless textual conclusions. From the lectures themselves, with closer scrutiny, they appear slow, ponderous and at times disjointed; lacking any clarity and textual continuity however, a closer look proves this to be incorrect, what rescues the lectures is the excellent translations provided by Graham Burchill (Foucault's translator during the whole series of his lectures). The synergy between biopolitics and biopower appears here with much more clarity and the theory on power which Foucault describes, as opposed to the classical version, shows itself as a migratory, transitory, mutation
Mutation
In molecular biology and genetics, mutations are changes in a genomic sequence: the DNA sequence of a cell's genome or the DNA or RNA sequence of a virus. They can be defined as sudden and spontaneous changes in the cell. Mutations are caused by radiation, viruses, transposons and mutagenic...
, stochastic
Stochastic
Stochastic refers to systems whose behaviour is intrinsically non-deterministic. A stochastic process is one whose behavior is non-deterministic, in that a system's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and by a random element. However, according to M. Kac and E...
system as opposed to a passive all persuasive and culpable genetically determined biology within the 'body' which is often presented, in both these lectures although it is highly technical, however, it isn't overwhelming, Foucault originally wanted to entitle his work on biopower, governmentality
Governmentality
Governmentality is a concept first developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in the later years of his life, roughly between 1977 and his death in 1984, particularly in his lectures at the Collège de France during this time...
, which was first introduced by Foucault's courses in his fourth lecture at the Collėge de France on 1 February 1978, meaning several different approach research areas; such as, political power
Political power
Political power is a type of power held by a group in a society which allows administration of some or all of public resources, including labour, and wealth. There are many ways to obtain possession of such power. At the nation-state level political legitimacy for political power is held by the...
, and its uses and relationship within modern society, political philosophy
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
, the uses of Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
text and their pursuit of political communication and political persuasion of an audience, political sovereignty where the point of departure from the singular ruler through monarchical rule and political economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
through the organisation of modern production which would prove to be paradoxical because the ‘subjects’ of ‘right’ appear within political sovereignty of whom it is directly aimed at, the population; which the government must manage. Political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
the point of justification for governmentality and a new kind of governmental reason the fundamental organizational framework for biopolitics according to Foucault studying this type of liberalism reveals the technology of how this is accomplished. A further look at the concept at the same time that Foucault gave his lectures at the Collėge de France there was other investigations which verify Foucault's investigations.
According to Albert Somit (the current editor of Research In Biopolitics series and leading theorist and scholar on biopolitics
Biopolitics
The term "biopolitics" or "biopolitical" can refer to several different yet often compatible concepts.-Definitions:# In the work of Michel Foucault, the style of government that regulates populations through "biopower" .# In the works of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, anti-capitalist insurrection...
), by 1972 the literature of biopolitics contained at least some 40 different items. And by the time that Foucault used the phrase in his famous lectures at the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
between January and April 1979, according to Somit, there were several different approaches to the concept of biopolitics.: 1. The case for a biologically oriented political science. 2. The ethological aspects of political behavior. 3. Physiological and psychopharmaceutical aspects of political behaviour. 4. Issues of public policy raised by recent advances in biology. Foucault then offers from his lectures his conclusions from both the schools of thought of the twentieth century from this time; neo-liberalism, German ordoliberalism (the Freiburg School
Freiburg School
The Freiburg School is a school of economic thought founded in the 1930s at the University of Freiburg.It builds somewhat on the earlier Historical school of economics but stresses that only some forms of competition are good, while others may require oversight. This is considered a lawful and...
) and the Chicago school (sociology)
Chicago school (sociology)
In sociology and later criminology, the Chicago School was the first major body of works emerging during the 1920s and 1930s specialising in urban sociology, and the research into the urban environment by combining theory and ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago, now applied elsewhere...
.
Foucault then takes on the concept into a different direction by positioning it between biological processes, the control of human populations through political means government, management and (through work and the labor force) of whole human populations (bio) and politics (polis), essentially this is Foucault's meaning of biopolitics; human biology and its amalgamation with politics. Foucault then situates liberalism's take on society where liberalism sees the state and society as a societal organism (neoliberalism never mentions it in any of their narratives nor is it ever mentioned by name as it is automatically assumed by liberalism that state organization was automatically, ingrained in the human psyche in the guise of an invisible organic whole called the body politic
Body politic
A polity is a state or one of its subordinate civil authorities, such as a province, prefecture, county, municipality, city, or district. It is generally understood to mean a geographic area with a corresponding government. Thomas Hobbes considered bodies politic in this sense in Leviathan...
, where all humans are involved regardless of their class position) capable of producing, multiplying, reproducing and if necessary, having a destructive capability. Foucault's disciples (Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben is an Italian political philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception and homo sacer....
), etc. offer a chilling account and new meaning to this biopower and its destructive capability; the so called Thanatopolitics,the systematic slaughtering of millions of people from the population, through the use of political power via the military machine which produced the politics of death an intersection between biopolitics a conception of that individualizing power which constructs the subjectivity of subjects, which has the power to make live and let die from the indivdual's perspective, which contrasts differently from the sovereign power (the executive power), which has the power to right to live and make die. Where the sword of Damocles is quite literally held over society's head where: "an absolutization of the biopower to make live intersected with the absolute generalization of the sovereign
Sovereign
A sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority within its jurisdiction.Sovereign may also refer to:*Monarch, the sovereign of a monarchy*Sovereign Bank, banking institution in the United States*Sovereign...
power to make die." Consequently, even the deaths of those in Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
, Belsen
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle...
concentration camps were literally death camps of organized slaughter for the helpless civilians of World War II what these brutal deaths signified a stark, brutish and cruel reality; "The power in thanatopolitics rests in the degradation of death, where in Auschwitz people did not die, rather corpses were produced, corpses without death, non-humans whose decease is debased into a matter of serial production." This kind of senseless butchery and murder can be justified both politically and morally (rather paradoxically) through the justice system (the so-called Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
) without any recourse to 'justice', made to be internalized as collective consciousness encoded as memory through shared common experience Remembrance Day
Remembrance Day
Remembrance Day is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth countries since the end of World War I to remember the members of their armed forces who have died in the line of duty. This day, or alternative dates, are also recognized as special days for war remembrances in many non-Commonwealth...
, Armistice Day
Armistice Day
Armistice Day is on 11 November and commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day...
for example, where it is frowned upon if you don't wear a poppy
Remembrance poppy
The remembrance poppy has been used since 1920 to commemorate soldiers who have died in war. They were first used in the United States to commemorate soldiers who died in World War I . Today, they are mainly used in current and former Commonwealth states to commemorate their servicemen and women...
particularly if you are a high-profile statesman
Statesman
A statesman is usually a politician or other notable public figure who has had a long and respected career in politics or government at the national and international level. As a term of respect, it is usually left to supporters or commentators to use the term...
(a politician), or a celebrity in public appearances on television this is then effectively passed on to future generations in the guise of ceremonies, monuments and memorials. The purpose of this intersection and cross amalgamation is twofold;first it serves as a warning to future generations "watch it you could be next" fear is its ultimate purpose through the aegis of the victor. Secondly, it serves as a deterrent to future events, but can also be resurrected and act as a rallying cry for the next conflict into the future. A crime or a singular event of horrendous proportions serves as a template (such as the holocaust for example) this crime or event had to have a label something to attach itself to, or more importantly something to apportion blame. The term genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
, coined by lawyer Raphael Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin was a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent. He is best known for his work against genocide, a word he coined in 1943 from the root words genos and -cide...
serves as good example which forms memory, memory meaning here of no origin you are required to remember the word and learn its meaning, not its origin. However, amidst all the carnage and slaughter Foucault gives us a reminder of those who took part in the blood shed by the users of those who control and are ultimately responsible for the productive resources operations, through no fault of their own, in order to replicate themselves as consumers through being in the unfortunate position of belonging to the unprecedented production and reproduction system in human history; the work force. The industrial working population which comprises the overwhelming majority of human populations anywhere in the world, in a wider context unwittingly there must be at least seen, essentially a systematic position however clandestinely operated, without disruption taking place of economic productivity and activity which still has to take place in a smooth, transitory and unfussy way this then takes on a new meaning Foucault offers us a chilling reminder of those who take part, through no fault of their own, in this involuntary naive complicity he introduces to us the concept of Homo economicus
Homo economicus
Homo economicus, or Economic human, is the concept in some economic theories of humans as rational and narrowly self-interested actors who have the ability to make judgments toward their subjectively defined ends...
(economic man)
This descriptive discovery of Homo oeconomicus allowed the removal of the sovereign from economic affairs and allowed a societal conception of economic process ; the so-called 'invisible hand
Invisible hand
In economics, invisible hand or invisible hand of the market is the term economists use to describe the self-regulating nature of the marketplace. This is a metaphor first coined by the economist Adam Smith...
' of the market coined by Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
to be 'rationally' justified politically (it is no secret that from this period of the 18th century political representation for the industrial working population in the form of representative democracy was coming to social prominence ), this would, while paradoxically, maximise the eventual target of economic liberalism for government permanently intervention to produce, multiply, and guarantee the freedoms required by economic liberalism. Foucault then briefly touches on B F Skinner; (the founder of radical behaviorism
Radical behaviorism
Radical behaviorism is a philosophy developed by B.F. Skinner that underlies the experimental analysis of behavior approach to psychology. The term radical behaviorism applies to a particular school that emerged during the reign of behaviorism...
), and Robert Castel
Robert Castel
Robert Castel is a French sociologist, currently a researcher at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.-Work:...
but unfortunately it is very brief however, in Foucault's defence, he himself does admit 'there is little literature' available in France on these techniques, however, to be critical, Foucault did belong to the most prestigious academic institutions in Europe (Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
) with unprecedented access to many journals in France and it would be unlikely that they would be unavailable to him. This is a slight point to make but a valid one when considering that he was effectively the 'master of the archive' and was brilliant at excavating 'obscure material' Foucault concentrates more on neo-liberalism's political justification for state existence, rather than Skinner's techniques on controlling human behavior through controlling the mind Manuel Castells
Manuel Castells
Manuel Castells is a sociologist especially associated with information society and communication research....
while operating in the field of social science dares to venture outside the limited field of social science which he noticed in his brilliant work Communication Power where
It is clear then that any standard neuroscience journal will show you this, it is not the body but the mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
, as is often thought by Foucault and the postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
movement, both thought that the body (not the mind), an often repeated mistake a simple mistake, but a crucial one. To get to the body the mind had to be rendered docile, not the body, this error is due to the standard social science model an incorrect view which still persist to this day, that the mind and body, the so called mind–body problem, or in philosophical circles dualism
Dualism (philosophy of mind)
In philosophy of mind, dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, which begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical....
were separate and somehow in conflict with one another which needed to be controlled (within whole populations rendering populations docile) which was what Foucault's original concept of biopower was primarily concerned with. While Foucault's concept of biopower is both evocative thought-provoking (and in some cases somewhat controversial in some quarters) and powerful it is this slight mistake which shouldn't postpone more research on the subject. The biggest challenge to Foucault's sympathetic disciples and independent researchers is this: Can they penetrate (as it stands now) the in-amenable impenetrable discourse that has been erected around the modern 'rational' nation state (rational choice theory
Rational choice theory
Rational choice theory, also known as choice theory or rational action theory, is a framework for understanding and often formally modeling social and economic behavior. It is the main theoretical paradigm in the currently-dominant school of microeconomics...
, sociobiology
Sociobiology
Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...
, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
, evolutionary stable strategy, political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
and foundationalism
Foundationalism
Foundationalism is any theory in epistemology that holds that beliefs are justified based on what are called basic beliefs . This position is intended to resolve the infinite regress problem in epistemology...
). In doing so can they decode (which the above mention 'social sciences' cannot) the modern power structure and show how it is encoded and woven into these various different cultural social practices and techniques that has been used as a discourse which has been presented over several millennium where explanation of the state is placed on a rational sober footing? Exactly like the natural sciences, as opposed to the Social Sciences where claims can be reduced to fact, rigorous approach is seen as hard work, not polemicist point scoring and guess work. It is certainly not insurmountable where for once there is no room for doubt moving from the shaky and fragile process of descriptive narrative to the sound and solid method of explanation. That is the fundamental challenge that any future theorist should now face.
Security, Territory, Population 1977-1978
Foucault lectured extensively from this period and was quite prolific on his general theme 'governmentality' the scope and the brilliance of the lectures cannot be overestimated. Here, when giving an overview it may not do it justice but it is essential to give a truncated version of the most important aspects of his lectures which were first edited and course summaries provided by Michel Senellart, from actual recorded audio tapes from the lectures translation of the courses was provided and published into English for the first time by Graham Burchell in 2007 and 2008 respectively. The reader is referred to a fuller and more expansive version of his lectures from this period, to read his published courses for a fuller, more expansive interpretation if they feel more justice is warranted.Territory
Foucault's lectures at the Collège de FranceCollège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
have just been translated and published, however, there are still seven volumes to be published to the English-speaking audience. The main focus of this section in the article are from the years 1977-1978 and 1978-1979 (see below). Foucault tries to trace the 'government of things' (as he refers to it) with its direct collaboration and correlation to modern society as it is today; starting from Niccolo Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...
with The Prince
The Prince
The Prince is a political treatise by the Italian diplomat, historian and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. From correspondence a version appears to have been distributed in 1513, using a Latin title, De Principatibus . But the printed version was not published until 1532, five years after...
in 1513, where Foucault noticed that there wasn't unanimous reception over the prince. The anti-Machiavellian literature wanted to replace the ability of the prince to hold on to his principality with something entirely new: an art of government. Foucault then notices that this art of government were internal to society itself, not external, this type of self government was practiced right throughout European society; such as Italy, Germany, France, etc. which was seized upon by the modern nation state from which it took up as its central practices. This is from as early as the 16th century which in due course enabled the elimination of the sovereign
Sovereign
A sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority within its jurisdiction.Sovereign may also refer to:*Monarch, the sovereign of a monarchy*Sovereign Bank, banking institution in the United States*Sovereign...
prince as a transcendental, singularity figure of Machiavelli's prince. All of society was enmeshed within this process including the prince (ruler) himself, thus a century later government became political and collaborative with economy (modern political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
as its 'rational' spokesman) and its partnership with political economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
. Foucault further notices that political economy had a new tool called statistics (another term for scientific government) and it is with François Quesnay
François Quesnay
François Quesnay was a French economist of the Physiocratic school. He is known for publishing the "Tableau économique" in 1758, which provided the foundations of the ideas of the Physiocrats...
that this process can be found the very notion of economic government. So, according to a text quoted by Foucault written by Guillaume de La Perrière
Guillaume de La Perrière
Guillaume de La Perrière, was born in Toulouse in 1499 or 1503, and died in 1565, known for his writings and emblem books. His work is often associated with the French Renaissance. La Perrière chronicled events in his home city of Toulouse...
"government is the right disposition of things arranged so as to lead a suitable end." To clarify this matter further there was a general shift in this notion of 'political power' and its relationship with territory, Machiavelli's principality and judicial sovereignty (which we now know as 'legalism') as defined by political philosophers and legal theorists of the day. Statistics was just a tactic to this new kind of political power, for Foucault statistics doesn't mean counting, it means the large population which can be expanded at will within the new territory, the modern idea of this is globalisation which rather differs somewhat from Marx's conception of surplus value with its ultimate aim to produce surplus population. Which simply means more human resources, larger government, bigger revenues for the state and a better 'scientific' approach to ordering of the state. Foucault talks quite a lot on the Christian pastorate, which was unheard of in the ancient world of the Greeks and the Romans, and primarily belongs to Christianity. For Foucault the work on this is unfinished business but however, it is pivotal to Foucault's understanding of how it was possible in the past of ancient society and now modern society how they were able (both ancient and modern) to produce docile populations through the government of souls to the government of men politically, he gives an outline of just what he was able to come with in his research. First of all the shepherd flock relationship was alien to the Greeks as a political model and was an entirely a Christian invention which migrated in a modern sense as shepherd, sheep, flock relationship, which means, roughly translated in modern terms as the political electorate and the political . Political community means the institutions that are governing the rest of society; government covered by legal institutions which gives both the political electorate, political executive and political community legitimacy, Foucault traces this practice to the ancient Greek text from the Pythagoreans known as nomas (meaning the law) and according to this text the shepherd is the lawmaker, he directs the flock, indicates the right direction and says how the sheep must mate to have good offspring. Foucault then reads into Robert Castel
Robert Castel
Robert Castel is a French sociologist, currently a researcher at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.-Work:...
's work; The Psychiatric Order, an essential read according to Foucault, where the techniques were finally finalised during the 18th century of this absolute global project which was directed towards the whole of society. Which was public hygiene and a whole battery of other techniques were used concerning the education of children, assistance to the poor, and through the psychiatric order, the institution of workers tutelage was coordinated through psychiatric practices. These technologies of power, Foucault claims, were introduced into the 18th century emerging prison system which migrated into the modern surveillance society through the infamous system that Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...
tried to introduce, the Panopticon
Panopticon
The Panopticon is a type of building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe all inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched...
; the modern internal and external surveillance system that modern society inhabits 'self watch' and 'self government'. Foucault then interprets this self-government as modern society conception of a top-down hierarchy, creating the delusion of a sovereign who rules in perpetual in the United Kingdom for example, this system still exists today through the ancient and legal maxim the king never dies, according to Sir William Blackstone
William Blackstone
Sir William Blackstone KC SL was an English jurist, judge and Tory politician of the eighteenth century. He is most noted for writing the Commentaries on the Laws of England. Born into a middle class family in London, Blackstone was educated at Charterhouse School before matriculating at Pembroke...
, the king survives in his successor and the right of the crown vests, eo instanti upon his heirs. Thus, according to Blackstone, which still exists in actual British legal legislator, not as legal theory but as legal reality and part of legitimacy for the monarch as well as the monarch keeping his/her own private written records of conversation and advice to ministers, they are considered secret, by her many advisors and cannot be released to the public. She is considered as immortal and has absolute right to council, privately it should be added (through the system known as Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, usually known simply as the Privy Council, is a formal body of advisers to the Sovereign in the United Kingdom...
) the monarch's own personal opinion will never beknown which is absolute from which there is no moment in time where the throne is vacant. Where the full focal point of a ruler of the system is a self perpetuating and self regularity (among those who inhabit the system), where clearly defined roles are defined and repeated right throughout the system(through norms). The system can readjust itself to whatever is thrown at it (an internal firewall integral to the system where the dangerous individual can be spotted and isolated at will). This was accomplished, according to Foucault, (rather paradoxically) from power relations elsewhere from other institutions in order to analyse them from the point of view of other technologies to free them elsewhere to form new systematic institutions as new knowledge objects. Foucault traces this original practice to government practices of the Middle Ages, where the term government meant an entirely different definition as modern society knows it. For example 'enough wheat to govern Paris for two years', this covers a wide semantic view, it also refers to control of one's body, soul and behaviour, conduct, diet, the care given to an individual. Which Foucault very often refers to as 'governmentality', self conduct or self government. Foucault traces this tactic back through history to the east (Mediterranean East, Egypt, Assyrian Empire, Babylonian etc.) which was specific to those societies. In Foucault own words this very aspect of Foucault's own work is still a work in progress, and is not a finalised research. However, Foucault situates this type of pastoral power squarely onto the new founded Christian Church where an organized religion ruled an entire society politically for 1500 years. And what was produced or outcome of all this turbulence was constant battles of supremacy for this type of pastoral power, government over men and their souls. The Church rapidly colonised this type of new power between 11th and 18th century, and according to Foucault, the church laid claim to the daily government of men in their real lives on the grounds of their salvation and no example of this exist anywhere in history of societies. Furthermore, Foucault research goes on to show that all the religious struggles from this period were fundamentally struggles over who would actually have the right to govern men, and to govern men in their daily lives they were practically struggles over who had the right to this power. Foucault then derives from this that from the 11th to the 18th century all the struggles of religion (wars of religion) were fundamentally struggles over who would actually have the right to govern men, and to govern men in their daily lives and in details and materiality of their existence; they were struggles over who has this power, from whom it derives, how it is exercised, the margin of autonomy for each, the qualification of those who exercise it, the limits of their jurisdiction, what recourse is possible against them, and what control is exercised over each. The Protestant Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
traversed this relationship of pastorate power and what resulted from the reformation, although an historical event, was a formidable reinforcement of the pastorate system of religious power (political power in modern societies). This type of religious power (pastoral power) was simply a reorganization of pastoral power from within, but, however, this type of reorganization of pastoral power encroached on the sovereigns (ruler) political power at the same time, it wasn't a smooth transition as is often portrayed. This led to a succession of tumultuous upheavals and revolts over this period, 11th-18th century; Norman Conquest, English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
, The Anarchy
The Anarchy
The Anarchy or The Nineteen-Year Winter was a period of English history during the reign of King Stephen, which was characterised by civil war and unsettled government...
, Hundred Years' War
Hundred Years' War
The Hundred Years' War was a series of separate wars waged from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet, also known as the House of Anjou, for the French throne, which had become vacant upon the extinction of the senior Capetian line of French kings...
, Crusades
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
, Peasants' Revolt
Peasants' Revolt
The Peasants' Revolt, Wat Tyler's Rebellion, or the Great Rising of 1381 was one of a number of popular revolts in late medieval Europe and is a major event in the history of England. Tyler's Rebellion was not only the most extreme and widespread insurrection in English history but also the...
, Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
The Crisis of the Late Middle Ages refers to a series of events in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that brought centuries of European prosperity and growth to a halt...
, popular revolt in late medieval Europe
Popular revolt in late medieval Europe
Popular revolts in late medieval Europe were uprisings and rebellions by peasants in the countryside, or the bourgeois in towns, against nobles, abbots and kings during the upheavals of the 14th through early 16th centuries, part of a larger "Crisis of the Late Middle Ages"...
. All of which are well attested too, Foucault refers to these revolts as revolts against conduct, the most radical of which were the Protestant reformation. Foucault then concludes that this political process can be traced to the general context of resistances, revolts and great insurrections of conduct (Peasants' Revolt of 1524-1526 for example).
Raison d'état (Reason of State)
Foucault concludes that these insurrections of conduct push started the transition of the pastoral of souls to the political government of men and the revolts, insurrections of conduct and resistances should be seen in this context. The new economic and consequently the political relations which the old feudal structures were unable to manage and lacked any effective framework, with which they were unable to cope. Foucault notices that the pastorate community were swamped with everyday life of individuals where it took charge of a whole series of questions and problem concerning material life, property, education of children. This led to an re-emergence of philosophy as the answer to the fundamental question of everyday life, in relation to others, in relation to those in authority, to the sovereign, or the feudal lord, and in order to direct ones mind as well, and to direct it in the right direction, to its salvation, certainly, but also to the truth. Philosophy took over from this period; on the religious function of how to conduct oneself as a result of taking a form that wasn't specially religious or ecclesiastical. With the advent of the 16th century western society enter the age of forms of conducting, directing, and government. Foucault then considers these great upheavals of Medieval Europe as nothing else but the translation of the continuum from god to men, political institutions and the political order. Which was broken by all the upheaval that Europe had suffered. This produced a series of conflicts among those who tried to define sovereignty (not political sovereignty as we know it) but the art of government, principia naturae (reason of government) which brought in the political philosophy doctrine, known as raison d'état (reason of state). By the end of the 16th century, Western society begins to define itself as territorial and expansitory with means of security as its primary focus. Foucault reads into this that the philosophy of raison d'état found its way into Europe through the Peace of WestphaliaPeace of Westphalia
The Peace of Westphalia was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October of 1648 in Osnabrück and Münster. These treaties ended the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch Republic, with Spain formally recognizing the...
(known as the balance of power); this can be found in the works of Italian political philosopher Giovanni Botero
Giovanni Botero
Giovanni Botero was an Italian thinker, priest, poet, and diplomat, best known for his work Della ragion di Stato . In this work, he argued against the amoral political philosophy associated with Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince, not only because it lacked a Christian foundation but also because...
where Botero concluded that the state is a firm domination over peoples and to keep hold of its preservation one was expected to have knowledge of the appropriate means for founding preserving, and expanding such a domination. This political philosophy of raison d'état was made as the chief political philosophy (with its accompanied rationality) in mainland Europe. Foucault's analysis of raison d'état (here Bogislaw Philipp von Chemnitz son of Martin von Chemnitz) writing under the pseudonym Hippolithus a Lapide first starts to query the first uses of the doctrine of raison d'état at the Treaty of Westphalia, where among the diplomatic community the doctrine starts to become popular for discussion) offers interesting conclusions of this new type of power the transition of the government of souls to the government of men. This first takes place between 13th century and the 18th century, from the 16th century the subject starts to appear of an idea of perpetual peace taken from the Middle Ages idea. Which primarily belonged to the church, from the 16th century therefore, exists the idea of a 'balance of power', with few exceptions, this idea became problematic, it started or rather had to included the populace. The solution to this problematic situation was the inclusion, within the philosophy of raison d'état, the incorporation of the populace which the machinery of the state had to govern. The government of men as Foucault refers to it, directly from the pastorate community to the transfer to the political community. Foucault then further shows that raison d'état wasn't much concerned with legality (as we know the term) but with political necessity; politics is concerned with necessity and if necessary politics must become violent lending to coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
; this means that it is obliged to sacrifice, to sever, cause harm, and it is led to be unjust and murderous. This produced a whole series of problematic solutions to this problem, of which the population became of primary concern, coup d'état politics isn't the practice as we know it today. Under the auspices of the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
wasn't primarily concerned with legitimacy, but survival of the state. Foucault then tries to show only when the problem of population and security starts taking effect amongst the different practices that the consideration of population becomes a worry. Foucault then notices a point of departure pointing out the idea of sedition and revolt starts to enter texts, but 'the people' proved elusive to define all around Europe, and never entered popular discussion, at first point of juncture was the nobles and their rivals began to become known as 'the people'. Which was the fundamental departure between Machiavelli and Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
, the former was concerned with governing the prince's principality, the later concerned with 'the people' as a populace.
Population
Foucault considers the breakthrough of "this governmental reasoning" of the population as a substantial event in Western history and society; comparable to the scientific revolutionScientific revolution
The Scientific Revolution is an era associated primarily with the 16th and 17th centuries during which new ideas and knowledge in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine and chemistry transformed medieval and ancient views of nature and laid the foundations for modern science...
of the 16th century. Where a substantial transfer of techniques and technologies were transferred from the sovereign individual (the monarch) to a new modified apparatus such as; the Carceral archipelago, Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a book by philosopher Michel Foucault. Originally published in 1975 in France under the title Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison, it was translated into English in 1977. It is an interrogation of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind...
(all in the space of 80 years Foucault's notices) which culminated into a new version known as nation states. This change took place in the 16th century and continued right through into the 19th century. Foucault then gives examples of this procedure through the system known as raison d'état, from this analytical view of the state by Claude Fleury
Claude Fleury
Claude Fleury , was a French ecclesiastical historian.Destined for the bar, he was educated at the aristocratic College of Clermont . In 1658 he was nominated an advocate to the parlement of Paris, and for nine years followed the legal profession...
, war, raising finance, justice; there must be an abundance of men (large scale phenomena of population). It is not the absolute number of the population that counts, but its relationship with the set composition of forces: the size of the territory, natural resources, wealth, commercial activities and so on. From Fleury's point of view, according to Foucault, the more there are of men, the stronger the state and the prince will be. So, according to Fleury, it is not expanse of land (expansion of the territory) that contributes greatness of the state but fertility and the number of men. Foucault then introduces into his ontology
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
investigations into the concept of 'police'; not the police of the criminal justice system as we know it today, but as concept known at that time as urbanization of the territory; which means making the kingdom, the entire territory into a large industrious town. Foucault then considers how Mercantilism
Mercantilism
Mercantilism is the economic doctrine in which government control of foreign trade is of paramount importance for ensuring the prosperity and security of the state. In particular, it demands a positive balance of trade. Mercantilism dominated Western European economic policy and discourse from...
played a big role in this new context of European balance of power; these are the mercantilist requirements: every country should try to have the largest possible population, second; the entire population be endgible and be put to work, third; wages given to the population be as low as possible, fourth; the cost price of goods at the lowest price as possible. Police according to Foucault consists of a sovereign exercise of royal power over individuals who are therefore subjects. The actual police is the direct governmentality of the sovereign who rules through raison d'état. What Foucault means by the governmentality of the sovereign is the mind of the police runs through all of the populations, collective consciousness therefore, reducing criminality (not its complete elimination), for political and economic reasons see Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a book by philosopher Michel Foucault. Originally published in 1975 in France under the title Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison, it was translated into English in 1977. It is an interrogation of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind...
), not through fear, but the knowledge of the police as a system with its own structural objective as laws, judicial, legislative operating as a microcosm of the societal body, which ultimately represents the sovereigns will. Initially, however, this wasn’t the sole intention of the police as we know it where Foucault introduces the original founder of the system now known to us as the police.Nicolas Delamare,(Foucault doesn’t mention the real founder of the police Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie
Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie
Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie is considered to be the founder of the first modern police force.-Early career:Born in 1625 in Limoges, France to a poor family, Gabriel Nicolas made a wealthy marriage in 1645 and took the name of Reynie, a minor lordship with an annual income of 200 pounds. He was a...
which Foucault neglects to mention). Foucault concentrates on how the police became an integral feature and intermingled with population, tracing the system on its foundation on how this is arranged around the composition of forces which the whole Western system of the balance of power, raison E’tat was organised and arranged around. This system consisted of an organised professional army,(as opposed to a private army organised around the service of the king) incorporated within this military system is Thantopolitics(Political power
Political power
Political power is a type of power held by a group in a society which allows administration of some or all of public resources, including labour, and wealth. There are many ways to obtain possession of such power. At the nation-state level political legitimacy for political power is held by the...
by other means) for the purposes of the slaughtering of millions, a system of legitimacy, comprising the sovereign, not the sovereign as a singular ruler but as an organized institution comprising societal state functions, Political sovereignty which guaranteed the sovereign's legitimacy, judiciary, legislator, Parliamentary system; political power, political executive, political elite, and a political communication system which is primarily aimed at the entire political community. And finally, the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle;the western political system of Consent of the governed
Consent of the governed
"Consent of the governed" is a phrase synonymous with a political theory wherein a government's legitimacy and moral right to use state power is only justified and legal when derived from the people or society over which that political power is exercised...
. This system at least gives the rational of why it was necessary to have on board a widely disparate populace; and its use, through the not widely known and little understood function of the Royal Prerogative
Royal Prerogative
The royal prerogative is a body of customary authority, privilege, and immunity, recognized in common law and, sometimes, in civil law jurisdictions possessing a monarchy as belonging to the sovereign alone. It is the means by which some of the executive powers of government, possessed by and...
. The origin of which can be traced back to the Middle Ages from where the western system of political power gets its central idea, from the point of view and simple justification of consent of the governed, legitimacy and political power. This legitimacy, which is exercised through the use of Parliamentary democracy(see also Greek government debt crisis
Greek government debt crisis
From late 2009, fears of a sovereign debt crisis developed among investors concerning Greece's ability to meet its debt obligations due to strong increase in government debt levels. This lead to a crisis of confidence, indicated by a widening of bond yield spreads and risk insurance on credit...
, National unity government
National unity government
A national unity government, government of national unity, or national union government is a broad coalition government consisting of all parties in the legislature, usually formed during a time of war or other national emergency.- Canada :During World War I the Conservative government of Sir...
, European sovereign debt crisis), was essential to the western system of political power and modern government;"The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government","The people" identifies the entire body of the citizens of a jurisdiction invested with political power or gathered for political purposes'" or "Popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people is the political principle that the legitimacy of the state is created by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power", all of this Foucault calls the political technology of biopower. This had to have the entire population on board in terms of ‘the police’, which had an entirely different meaning from what we know it today by tracing the concept back through time from the 15th century and 16th century usage, previous thinkers meant the term as a community association governed by a public authority and political power with accountability to a public authority. By quoting Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi
Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi
Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi was one of the leading German political economists in the 18th century.- Life :Justi was born in Brücken...
“of laws and regulations that concern the interior of a state and which endeavours to strengthen and increase the power of this state and make good use of its forces.”What Foucault reveals is that the original police had a different function as we know it today;for example one of their primary function was to administer the state in the guise of statisticians, allocating resources, supervision of grain in times of crisis, ensuring circulation of goods and men, secure the development of the state’s forces. This was so successful this then led to an extension of the franchising out in the form of recruitment of the then University
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
system. This bought in the next generation of administrators of the new ‘nation state’ system. This bought in two types of police;administrators who formed the Polizeiwissenschaft
Polizeiwissenschaft
Polizeiwissenschaft was a discipline born in the first third of the 18th century which lasted until the middle of the 19th century.Considered as the science of the internal order of the community, it was a comprehensive term, which included today's...
(the science of police, the other type would become known as Polizeistaat police state, i.e. policing of the state), originally from Germany, this system spread right throughout Europe from the middle of the 17th century and most crucially, this Polizeiwissenschaft grow a substantial bibliography of this system ‘science of police’ by the 19th century, Foucault’s research shows that some 4000 different pamphlets and articles had emerged from 1520-1850 under the titles of “science of police in the broad sense” and “science of the police in the strict sense”. This became known as Cameral science(the new modern Public administration
Public administration
Public Administration houses the implementation of government policy and an academic discipline that studies this implementation and that prepares civil servants for this work. As a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" its "fundamental goal.....
). The future administrators for the future modern nation state system with many functions;such as Bureaucrats, Civil Servants, Think tanks, Public policy
Public policy
Public policy as government action is generally the principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs. In general, the foundation is the pertinent national and...
makers, Economists all from the university system.
Salvation
MercantilismMercantilism
Mercantilism is the economic doctrine in which government control of foreign trade is of paramount importance for ensuring the prosperity and security of the state. In particular, it demands a positive balance of trade. Mercantilism dominated Western European economic policy and discourse from...
, according to Foucault, was the first rationalization of the exercise of power as a practice of government; it is the first time that a knowledge of the state can be employed as tactics for the state, namely statistics. Foucault begins to chart through this historical, political reasoning behind the doctrine raison d'état (reason of state). The time of the Middle Ages where the idea existed of an indefinite permanent character of political power and government. This perpetual discourse, the idea of progress in men's knowledge about themselves and towards others, however, one thing was internally missing from this analysis, namely the notion of population. Foucault traces the conceptual discourse of the populace back to the Middle Ages definition of the pastorate which to the Middle Ages mind meant salvation, obedience and truth. First of all the discourse of raison d'état and salvation; Foucault manages to trace conceptually the system of salvation through the 17th century usage of coup d'état politics. Foucault notices that entire treatise were devoted to the very notion of coup d'état, for example a text written in 1639 by Gabriel Naude
Gabriel Naudé
Gabriel Naudé was a French librarian and scholar. He was a prolific writer who produced works on many subjects including politics, religion, history and the supernatural. An influential work on library science was the 1627 book Advice on Establishing a Library...
, entitled Considerations sur les coups d'etat and writing in 1631 Foucault sites Jean Sirmond
Jean Sirmond
Jean Sirmond was a neo-Latin poet and French man of letters, historiographer of Louis XIII.-His life and writing:...
Le Coup d’Estat de Louis XIII. For at the beginning of the 17th century the term "coup d'état" did not in any way signify someone's seizure of the state at the cost of those who had previously held it and are dispossessed. The general opinion of the day (17th century) in political thought was a suspension of, or a departure from laws and legality. William King
William King
William King may refer to:*Bill King, , American radio announcer*Billy King , Irish cricketer*Willie King , blues guitarist and singer...
's 1711 translation of Gabriel Naude's work with which coup d'état is translated as "master stroke of state". There was a whole series of different meanings, not in a series of different ways of governing the state, but finding a way or system of legality or legitimacy which by no way was homogeneous. Salvation here means not 'the people' or the ones being governed, but the salvation of the state, its legitimacy and those who have to respect the law. Coup d'état politics was a technical device to ensure legality, legitimacy of the sovereign and legality of the laws of territory and those who were to be governed through raison d'état and is fundamental with regards to those laws, but it makes use of this in its usual functioning precisely because it deems them necessary or useful. In Foucault's analysis of this aspect of salvation of the state it is necessary that the state should push aside the civil, moral, and natural laws that it previously wanted to recognize and had to incorporate it into its legal structural system. Foucault's conclusion is that the modern nation state can be traced back to these very ancient, historical practices of which coup d'état and therefore, is an assertion of raison d'état and a self-manifestation of the state. The state itself is above any law, and must remain so, not if it wants to maintain its own salvation.
Obedience
This led to political theorists of the day juxtaposing theories concerning state, government, body politics, and political power; these theorists dare not call these laws divine or God-made law, but instead refer to them as 'philosophical'.As in Gabriel Naude, where he refers to the salvation of the state "The coup d'état does not comply with natural, universal noble and philosophical, it complies with an artificial, particular, political justice concerning the necessity of the state." For Foucault, politics is not above this process which it cannot be afforded, therefore, is not something that has to fall within a remit of legality or a system of laws. Politics, according to Foucault's use of the term, is concerned with necessity, necessity of the state which puts to an end to all privileges in order to make itself obeyed by everyone. So you do not have government connected with legality, but raison d'état connected with necessity. Foucault then touches briefly on the theatrical practice of raison d'état and its prevalence over legitimacy. Which would be rather ironical as this is the main problem of theatrical practice in politics, which was in reality the practice of raison d'état. The theatre where this is played out in the form of dramatization and a constant mode of manifestation of the state and the sovereign as the holder of state power. Thus, for Foucault analysis this contrasts differently with and in opposition to traditional ceremonies of royalty which from anointment to coronation up to the entry into towns or major cities or iconic, famous funerals of infamous monarchs, this marked the religious association of the sovereign, or at least the sovereign's alliance with the character and association with religious power and theology. This, Foucault notices was William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's main intention where the political representation (modern representation of this is media visual representation of political power, political consultants, image makers (media consultants), and 'power politics' and its constant fixation with voting and leading political personalities) of the sovereign Henry V
Henry V of England
Henry V was King of England from 1413 until his death at the age of 35 in 1422. He was the second monarch belonging to the House of Lancaster....
for example was a part of historical drama, although based on real people and events, but for all intents and purposes was political representation in the form of plots, intrigues, disgraces, preferences, exclusions, good guys and bad guys and political exiles, where the theatre represents the state itself. Foucault now turns his attention to obedience and the population and why this was a problem among political theorists of the times. He then produces Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
's text "Of Seditions and Troubles". In this essay Bacon gives a complete description on the physics of sedition, sedition and the precautions to be taken against it, and of government of the 'people'. This became a worry for Bacon and other political theorists; the first signs of sedition were circulation of libels, pamphlets and discourse against the state and those who govern. Second, Bacon notices the reversal of values or evaluations which puts the existence at risk. Weakness in the chain of command. Foucault reads into Bacon the theory of revolt of the people and there are two categories of individuals within the state, the common people (very often referred in text as Peasants, the People
People
People is a plurality of human beings or other beings possessing enough qualities constituting personhood. It has two usages:* as the plural of person or a group of people People is a plurality of human beings or other beings possessing enough qualities constituting personhood. It has two usages:*...
, the Common people
Common People
"Common People" is a song by English alternative rock band Pulp. It was released as a single in 1995, reaching number two on the UK singles chart. It also appears on the band's 1995 album Different Class. The song is about those who were perceived by the songwriter as wanting to be "like common...
, the poor, or at times Vagabond
Vagabond
Vagabond may refer to:*Vagabond , an itinerant personIn music:*Vagabond , an alternative rock band fronted by Jørn Lande*Vagabond , a band from the UK*Vagabond , a song by Australian band Wolfmother...
vagrants) and the nobility, what differentiates the common people and the nobility is their unshared interest. They do not have any common interest between the two groups in Bacon's view the common people are too slow to engage in revolt and sedition. But if the common people and the nobility ever unite and become one unit they represent a threat to the sovereign's rule. A slow people and a weak nobility (because of their small number) mean that sedition can be prevented and discontents stopped from contaminating each other. Bacon then views the process of the danger of sedition where you can either buy the nobility or you can execute them. The problem of the common people becomes a different matter, they are not easily bought. So Bacon himself offers a whole series of measures and reforms that should be implemented, reducing the rate of interest, avoiding excessively large estates, increased wages, promoting external trade increasing the value of raw materials through work, and assuring provisions of transport to foreign countries. While the differences between Bacon and Machiavelli appear subtle, it was 250 years later that the political model of reforms changed, why? Foucault wasn't much interested into the notion of reform as 'cure', but what was behind the underlying mechanism that was driving the system of reform ensuring reforms become a permanent feature of 'failure'. Foucault begins to trace through this development through the political model of reform and one crucial development was the economy, a politics of economic calculation with Mercantilism and for Foucault this was not just a theory but was above all else a political practice. The invention of the political campaign which Foucault traces back through its original modern founder, Cardinal Richelieu, who according to Foucault actually invented the modern political campaign by means of lampoons and pamphlets and more importantly, invented those professional manipulators of opinion who were called at the time publicistes.Thus, for Foucault raison d'état must always act on the collective consciousness of the population, not only to impose some true or false belief on them, as when, for example, sovereigns want to create belief in their own legitimacy or in illegitimacy of their rivals, but in such away that the collective opinion can be modified along with their behaviour as economic and political subjects. The main function of public opinion is to produce a politics of believable truth within raison d'état. The most obvious example of all this is that propaganda,in its political sense has a twofold objective: 1, The main function of public opinion is to produce a emergence, alliance between political propaganda and a belief system of politics of truth within collective consciousness, a version of political continuity within raison d’Etat, this practice of political reform gets passed on to future generations ensuring failure. 2, The other main political purposes of propaganda is to make sure that the chaos of modern living becomes accepted as the norm therefore, rendering whole swathes of society useless (through cultural practices), in its objectives to do anything about it. You can do something about it, but only within the rules of a political tool, even within the confines of political buffoons who appear to have no hold or control of the system that they are in charge of. This tool is soiled and cannot be used for practical change but its power comes from those who gives comfort to those who use it in the hope of a false belief of change can happen leaving the practicalities of the system as ‘real’ events. This, Foucault notices produced two consensus correlations namely;birth of economists, birth of the ‘’publicistes’’ known as economy and public opinion the two correlative elements of field of reality that is emerging as the direct correlate of government.
The Birth of Biopolitics 1978-1979
For Foucault, biopolitics is not the version so often portrayed by other writers such as Albert Somit, biopolitics for Foucault is political power exercised on whole populations in every aspect of human life. Foucault then offers rather tentative, slow and at times brilliant analysis of the basic definition of the practices of neo-liberalism art of government. Foucault then tries to redefine the boundaries set by liberalism thought on this matter, while it still defines neo-liberalism objectives as fundamentally the same, the fundamental principles still remain the same; namely the doctrine of raison d'état now becomes embroiled with limiting the state actors powers where they become hostages to their own fate. Limiting the exercise of government power internally, this can mean several meanings, but Foucault concentrates on the monetary aspect of government as a point of concern, frugal government, the art of maximum and a minimum and between the total opposite minimum and maximum. Foucault looks at the early institutional practices of this method of frugal government, which starts from the early Middle Ages right down to the early 16th and 17th centuries. The market appears from the early Middle Ages where the function of interest on money lending was strictly prohibited (one of the reasons being that the church was the main institution lending money at interest on church property where rental income was charged on church property a primary source of income it would have brought down the price of the church rental income). Justification, according to Foucault, for the market was justice which was why the market existed in the first place. What was meant by justice? Foucault offers this explanation; it was a site of justice in the sense that the sale price fixed in the market was seen, both by theorist and in practice, as a just price, or at any rate a price that should be the just price, which meant to the theorists of the day a price that was to have a certain relationship with work performed, with the needs of the merchants, and of course, with the consumers needs and possibilities. The next general theme Foucault then introduces to the lectures is the German OrdoliberalismOrdoliberalism
Ordoliberalism is a school of liberalism that emphasised the need for the state to ensure that the free market produces results close to its theoretical potential . The theory was developed by German economists and legal scholars such as Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm, Hans Grossmann-Doerth and Leonhard...
, the Freiburg School
Freiburg School
The Freiburg School is a school of economic thought founded in the 1930s at the University of Freiburg.It builds somewhat on the earlier Historical school of economics but stresses that only some forms of competition are good, while others may require oversight. This is considered a lawful and...
which produced general problems among themselves, namely the state apparatus and its reconstruction after the Second World War. This general theme led to neo-liberalism heavy reliances on the law obviously, but it too, had to produce a new kind of consensus and a rearrangement consensus between the general populace; the working population, those engaged in production. This general or collective consensus produced 'economic partners' in this so called 'economic game', such as; investors, employers, government officials, work force, and trade union officials. Foucault then offers some explanation on what was the reasoning behind this consensus between all these so called different economic partners. According to Foucault this produced another kind of consensus, which was political power of the electoral community, not the political power of the right to vote, but the right of the political community to exchange seats, a rearrangement of the very relations of the so called change of 'government' which gives and protects legitimacy. Which becomes political consensus, inasmuch as the 'economic partners 'accept the economic game of freedom. This is very much on neo-liberalism agenda, which according to Foucault was exactly the agenda that neo-liberalism required. A strong Deutschmark, a satisfactory rate of economic growth, increased wages, an expanding purchasing power, and a favorable balance of payments which became a by product of the effects of good government. Foucault then reads into this that in contemporary German which was in reality a founding consensus of the state. Foucault then notices that this formation of a liberal type of governmentality had general shifts within this circle which can be traced back to the 18th century old or classical liberalism programmed by the Physiocrats
Physiocrats
Physiocracy is an economic theory developed by the Physiocrats, a group of economists who believed that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of "land agriculture" or "land development." Their theories originated in France and were most popular during the second half of the 18th...
, Turgot, and the other economists of the 18th century, for whom the problem was the exact opposite. The problem that neo-liberalism had to resolve was the following: given the existence of a legitimate state, which is fully functional under the police state (see Security, Territory, Population) with all its administration form of police state, how can this be limited within the existing state and, above all, allow for the necessary economic freedom within it. For Foucault this was the exact opposite because after the Second World War, the war machine that was unleashed was due to the fact that the system of economic rationality had completely broken down and the organisational network of world trade (world trade starting period 1870) and its accompanied trade settlement system had completely become untenable in which trust in the payment settlement system had completely vanished, therefore initiating the military machine and the Carl von Clausewitz
Carl von Clausewitz
Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz was a Prussian soldier and German military theorist who stressed the moral and political aspects of war...
dream "War is the continuation of politics by other means" precipitating the systematic slaughtering of millions.
Policy of society
Another theme Foucault concentrates on is the neo-liberalism conception of social effects, Gesellschaftspolitik, known in English, from the German, as the policy of society, this policy of society addresses the general or whole consensus of society. But this Gesellschaftspolitik had a two sided inconsistency, it had to produce the willing actors who take part in the economic process to accept the reality of their economic position and therefore their fate. The working population or labor force, the ones involved in production, madness, disease, medicine, delinquency, sexuality, but somehow, none of these faults/errors never existed before practices were involved and invented to become part of collective consciousness within practices. Foucault deals with this problem as necessary intrinsic operations of government which inextribably can produce regimes of truth (Foucault means regimes of truth as necessary social practices which become necessary objects of knowledge). The ability to extrapolate a collective of co-ordinate errors becoming co-ordinated practices which become something that did not exist in the first place, but now becomes established systems of knowledge objects. The political regimes of truth (political power upon every aspect of human social life), the battle between legitimacy, submitting to a fabricated division between true and false. Foucault begins to try and trace back through time how this was at all possible, Foucault manages this task by reading into the set of practices interwoven into the policy of society, this was accomplished from the 16th until the 18th century where there was a whole set of practices of tax levies, customs, charges, manufacture regulations, regulations of grain prices, the protection and codification of market practices, etc. This was well conceived by the exercise of sovereign rights, feudal rights, as the maintenance of customs, as effective procedure of enrichment for the financial administration of the general sovereign or the tax authorities, or as techniques for preventing urban revolt due to the discontent of this or that group of subjects. Foucault takes a look at these general practices through looking at the economic practices involved from the 18th century (where MercantilismMercantilism
Mercantilism is the economic doctrine in which government control of foreign trade is of paramount importance for ensuring the prosperity and security of the state. In particular, it demands a positive balance of trade. Mercantilism dominated Western European economic policy and discourse from...
was at its peak) where a coherence strategy established a intellgible mechanism which provided a coherent link, together these different practices and their effects, and consequently allows one to judge all these practices as good or bad, not in terms of a law or moral principle, but in terms of propositions subject to the false dichotomy between true and false. Governments, Foucault noticed, were compelled to enter this competitive environment, by doing so entering into new regimes of truth with the fundamental effect of reconfiguring all the questions formally beset by the art of government. Foucault now turns his attention to ordoliberalism
Ordoliberalism
Ordoliberalism is a school of liberalism that emphasised the need for the state to ensure that the free market produces results close to its theoretical potential . The theory was developed by German economists and legal scholars such as Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm, Hans Grossmann-Doerth and Leonhard...
's view on social policy and how this can be woven into society's political power which differentates from Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
's liberalism two centuries earlier. This problem was faced head on by ordoliberalism; how can the overall exercise of political power be modeled on the principles of a market economy? To accomplish this the old version of classic liberalism had to be subjected to a whole series of modifications. The first set of transformations was the dissociation of the market economy from the political principle of laissez-faire
Laissez-faire
In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....
, this uncoupling of the market and laissez-faire was replaced with, not abandon by a theory of pure competition which produced a formal structure and formal properties which could lay the fundamental principle of the compective structure that assured economic regulation through the price mechanism. This break from traditional liberalism principles, founded by Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann was an American intellectual, writer, reporter, and political commentator famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War...
and expressed by such others as Jacques Rueff
Jacques Rueff
Jacques Rueff was a French economist and adviser to the French Government.An influential French conservative and free market thinker, Rueff was born the son of a well known Parisian physician and studied economics and mathematics at the École Polytechnique...
, Wilhelm Röpke
Wilhelm Röpke
Wilhelm Röpke was Professor of Economics, first in Jena, then in Graz, Marburg, Istanbul and finally in Geneva, and the main spiritual father of the German social market economy, theorising and collaborating to organise the post-World War II economic re-awakening of the then destroyed German...
, Alexander Rüstow
Alexander Rüstow
Alexander Rüstow was a German sociologist and economist. He originated the term neoliberalism meant as a synonym for Ordoliberalism but the term has undergone a change of meaning. He was one of the fathers of the "Social Market Economy" that shaped the economy of West-Germany after World War II...
, Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August Hayek CH , born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek, was an economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought...
, Robert Marjolin
Robert Marjolin
Robert Marjolin was a French economist and politician involved in the formation of the European Economic Community.-Early life and education:...
, Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and classical liberal who had a significant influence on the modern Libertarian movement and the "Austrian School" of economic thought.-Biography:-Early life:...
, and their intermediaries and a non-economist, but however was highly influential, Raymond Aron
Raymond Aron
Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron was a French philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist.He is best known for his 1955 book The Opium of the Intellectuals, the title of which inverts Karl Marx's claim that religion was the opium of the people -- in contrast, Aron argued that in...
. All of these people set up a committee, a highly influential think tank called CERL they produced a set of interesting pamphlets which were produced throughout the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s which wanted to established the principles of economic liberalism and the price mechanism, by maintaining a contractual regime of production and exchange which did not exclude intervention arising from the duties of the state, and according to them, contrast differently from the so called 'planned economy' of the former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. How would neo-liberalism define the new governmental action? Foucault traces three examples which neo-liberalism call a conformable economic action; firstly the question of monopolies which they claimed differed somewhat from classic liberalism. The classic conception of the economy as the monopoly seen as somehow semi-neutral, semi-necessary consequence of the competition in a capitalist system. The neo-liberal dream of competition cannot be left to develop without monopolistic phenomena appearing at the same time which precisely have the effect of limiting attenuating and given nullifying competition. This would eventually have the effect, of suppressing the operation of mechanism that facilitate, bring with them, and hopefully determine its eventual destiny. However, Foucault notices specific problems began to emerge for neo-liberalism, not only specific to neo-liberalism was how to incorporate civil society, political power; and Homo oeconomicus
Homo Oeconomicus
Homo Oeconomicus is an interdisciplinary peer reviewed academic journal publishing studies in classical and neoclassical economics, public choice and social choice theory, law and economics, and philosophy of economics....
into a non-substitutable, irreducible atom of interest. Foucault makes the starting point of his investigations into this process from the 18th century where Homo oeconomicus (this problem still persists to this day) has to be integrated into the system of which he is a part, and this is crucial, into the economic domain, not by transfer, subtraction, or dialectic of renunciation, but by a dialectic of spontaneous multiplication.
Civil society
The concept Homo oeconomicus had specific problems being interwoven into the new-found economic process of the 18th century. Foucault manages to trace this anomaly through the subject of right (known as consent of the governedConsent of the governed
"Consent of the governed" is a phrase synonymous with a political theory wherein a government's legitimacy and moral right to use state power is only justified and legal when derived from the people or society over which that political power is exercised...
the theory of right of that legal theorists of the 18th century tried to establish during their legal discourse) which did receive a great deal of attention because of what was perceived at the time of problems regarding the sovereign's power. The subject of right had to perform slight modifications because of the implication of him (the subject of right) limiting the sovereign's power. Which certainly differed from classical liberalism's conception of the sovereign power, which from the 16th century was conceived of as impenetrable to any rational discourse. The sovereign was conceived of as absolute, but the discovery of the people, subject of rights, homo oeconomicus, changed all that because of the arrival of market practices (the market system of capitalism) from the 18th century. Even the Physiocrats insisted that the market, the sovereign had to really respect the market. How could this new problematic of liberalism, the sovereign, the market, and the new-found political power, homo oeconomicus which economic activity had at least specific patterns of correlation could be moulded into one tight unit? Foucault seeks the answer to this with a new field of reference, civil society
Civil society
Civil society is composed of the totality of many voluntary social relationships, civic and social organizations, and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society, as distinct from the force-backed structures of a state , the commercial institutions of the market, and private criminal...
. Foucault answers this question on the process of how to govern through governmental technology, the new neo-liberals, economic liberals sought to have a heterogeneity of the economic and the judicial which must be pegged to an economy understood as process of production and exchange. Foucault then tries to enhanced the general theme and tries to show the mixed conflagration of the legal and economic theorists and those who propagate the theory of right (consent of the governed) through political philosophy and political science which was a battle for a judicial political project. Civil society
Civil society
Civil society is composed of the totality of many voluntary social relationships, civic and social organizations, and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society, as distinct from the force-backed structures of a state , the commercial institutions of the market, and private criminal...
, according to Foucault's analysis, must place particular attention to its correlation of technology of government, the rational measure of which must be judicially pegged to an economy understood as the process of production and exchange. What made this version of civil society tick? Foucault makes the amalgamation of civil society into society (as we know it) which at the end of the 18th century became known as the nation (now known to us as the nation state). This became omnipresent, nothing was allowed to escape, which was to conform to the rules of right (consent of the governed), and a government which nevertheless respects the specificity of the economy, will be a government that manages civil society, the nation, society, and the social. Foucault continues the theme on Homo oeconomicus which became part and parcel to this feature, Homo oeconomicus and civil society were two inseparable features and belonged to the same ensemble of the technology of liberal governmentality. For Foucault this was no mere coincidence, since the 19th century, civil society has always been referred to in political philosophy
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
discourse as a fixed reality, which according to this theory, was outside of government or the state or state apparatuses or institutions. This omnipresent has many characteristics and one its main features are a primary and immediate reality which forms part of modern governmental technology. Foucault views this governmental characteristic as simply the direct correlation of modern society's direct association with madness, disease, sexuality, criminal recidivism and criminal delinquency which he calls transactional realities. Although civil society, along with its associated governmental technologies haven't always existed they are nonetheless real, by real he simply means the power dynamic and their interplay with the rest of society in which all those involved (which is pretty much all of society) everything within it constantly eludes them, at the interface so to speak of those who are governed and those who govern. It is in Foucault's insightful analysis where he makes four important points on this governmental modern technology of biopolitics; an absolute correlative to the form of governmental technology which liberalism associated itself with, and it is pegged, tied to the specificity of economic process. How were all three incorporated into rational liberalism philosophical discourse? Foucault cites the well-known texts of Adam Ferguson
Adam Ferguson
Adam Ferguson FRSE, also known as Ferguson of Raith was a Scottish philosopher, social scientist and historian of the Scottish Enlightenment...
: Essay on the History of Civil Society; from the 18th century to show how liberalism approached this problem from different angles and Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
and his own infamous text The Wealth of Nations
The Wealth of Nations
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, generally referred to by its shortened title The Wealth of Nations, is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith...
which complement one another with regards civil society. First: there is a political and social correlate in terms of civil society. Second, civil society as principle of spontaneous synthesis; third, civil society as permanent matrix of political power; and fourth, civil society as the motor element that drives human history.
Foucault's audio tape lectures at the Collège de France
Michel Foucault: Audio Archive Audio Tapes of Society Must Be Defended, Security, Territory, Population and The Birth of Biopolitics in the original French translation Lectures at the Collège de FranceSociety Must Be Defended 1975-1976
- (Society Must Be Defended)
- January 7, 1976
- January 14, 1976
- January 21, 1976
- January 28, 1976
- February 4, 1976
- February 11, 1976
- February 18, 1976
- February 25, 1976
- March 3, 1976
- March 10, 1976
- March 17, 1976
Security, Territory, Population 1977-1978
- Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France (1977–1978) Audio tapes
- January 11, 1978
- January 18, 1978
- January 25, 1978
- February 1, 1978
- February 8, 1978
- February 15, 1978
- February 22, 1978
- March 1, 1978
- March 8, 1978
- March 15, 1978
- March 22, 1978
- March 29, 1978
- April 5, 1978
The Birth of Biopolitics 1978-1979
- January 10,1979
- January 17,1979
- January 24,1979
- January 31,1979
- February 7,1979
- February 14,1979
- February 21,1979
- March 7,1979
- March 14,1979
- March 21,1979
- March 28,1979
- April 4,1979
Accessed 14 July 2011
Further reading
- Research in Biopolitics: Volume 1: Sexual Politics and Political Feminism Editor Albert Somit (1991)
- Research in Biopolitics: Volume 2: Biopolitics and the Mainstream: Contributions of Biology to Political Science Editor Albert Somit (1994)
- Research in Biopolitics: Volume 3: Human Nature and Politics Editors Steven A.Peterson Albert Somit (1995)
- Research in Biopolitics: Volume 4: Research in Biopolitics Editors Albert Somit Steven A.Peterson (1996)
- Research in Biopolitics: Volume 5: Recent Explorations in Biology and Politics Editors Albert Somit Steven A.Peterson (1997)
- Research In Biopolitics: Volume 6: Sociobiology and Politics Editors Albert Somit Steven A.Peterson (1998)
- Research In Biopolitics: Volume 7: Ethnic Conflicts Explained By Ethnic Nepotism Editors Albert Somit Steven A.Peterson (1999)
- Research In Biopolitics: Volume 8: Evolutionary Approaches In The Behavioral Sciences: Toward A Better Understanding of Human Nature Editors Steven A.Peterson Albert Somit (2001)
- Research In Biopolitics: Volume 9: Biology and Political Behavior: The Brain, Genes and Politics - the Cutting Edge; Editor Albert Somit (2011)
- Michel Foucault, The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France 1982-1983 (2010)
- Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth: Lectures at the Collège de France 1983-1984 (2011)
External links
- Bíos:Biopolitics and Philosophy By Roberto Esposito Bíos:Biopolitics and Philosophy Contains chapter on Thantopolitics By Roberto Esposito 24 August 2011
- Research In Biopolitics: Volume 9: Biology and Political Behavior: The Brain, Genes and Politics - the Cutting Edge (2011) edited by Steven A. Peterson, Albert Somit http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aQgHv5U8YEAC&lpg=PP1&ots=BNwxkd5CtD&dq=Biology%20and%20Political%20Behavior%3A%20The%20Brain%2C%20Genes%20and%20Politics%20-%20the%20Cutting%20Edge&lr&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=Biology%20and%20Political%20Behavior:%20The%20Brain,%20Genes%20and%20Politics%20-%20the%20Cutting%20Edge&f=falseResearch In Biopolitics: Volume 9: Biology and Political Behavior: The Brain, Genes and Politics - the Cutting Edge] Accessed 11 August 2011
- Nicolas Delamare Traité de la police: où l'on trouvera l'histoire de son établissement Treaty of the police (1707) Accessed 11 August 2011
- Nicolas Delamare: A Brief Biography Nicolas Delamare: A Brief Biography Accessed 1 November 2011
- Policante, A. "War against Biopower: Timely Reflections on an Historicist Foucault" Theory & Event, 13.1 March 2010]
- Walter Bagehot Physics and Politics (1872) Accessed 3 January 2011
- Albion Small The Cameralists The Pioneers of German Social Policy 1909Accessed 13 November 2011
- Communication Power Manuel Castells (2009) Accessed 3 March 2011
- Biopolitics encyclopedia entry from Generation-Online Accessed 22 October 2010
- The New Age Volume 10, Number 9 Biopolitics p. 197 London: The New Age Press, Ltd., 29 December 1911
- "Biopower. Foucault" on Philosophy.com: Gary Sauer-Thompson's Weblog Accessed 13 September 2009
- Rabinow, Paul & Rose, Nikolas (2006) "Biopower Today", BioSocieties 1, 195–217 (London School of Economics and Political Science) Accessed 13 September 2009
- Culture Machine eJournal Volume 7 (2005): Special edition on Biopolitics Edited by Melinda Cooper, Andrew Goffey and Anna Munster
- "What is Biopower" on Utopia or Bust
- Foucault Studies: Number 10: November 2010: Foucault and Agamben Accessed 2 March 2011
- Foucault Studies: Number 11: February 2011: Foucault and Pragmatism Accessed 22 April 2011
- Foucault Studies: Number 7, September 2009:Review article By Marius Gudmand-Høyer and Thomas Lopdrup Hjorth The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979 Accessed 25 July 2011
- Foucault Studies: Number 5, January 2008, Review Article By Thomas F. Tierney Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977‐1978Accessed 25 July 2011