Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governmentality

MAURIZIO LAZZARATO
“knowledge that is techne,” and does not risk anything by speaking, the
parrhesiast takes the risk not only of polemics, but also of “hostility, war,
hatred, and death.” He takes the risk of pitting equals against themselves.
Between the speaker and what he enunciates, between the one who tells
the truth and the one who accepts to receive the word, an affective and
subjective bond is established—a “belief,” which, as William James points
out, is a “disposition to act.” 14 The self-relation, the relation to others, and
the belief that unites them, can be contained neither in equality nor in right.
Crisis of parrhesia
In the crisis of Greek democracy Rancière perceives simply a desire of the
aristocrats to reestablish their birthright, status, and wealth, whereas
Foucault, without disregarding this aspect, sees the crisis as coalescing
around the relation between politics and ethics, equality and differentiation.
The enemies of democracy put their finger on a problem that the
proponents of equality as the sole principle of politics (Rancière and
Badiou) do not see, and which constitutes thereby one of the stumbling
blocks of nineteenth and twentieth century communism, without this
having led to any useful responses.
As the enemies of equality claim, if everyone can have their say in the
affairs of the city, there will be as many constitutions and governments as
there are individuals. If everyone can take the floor, then the fools, the
drunkards, will be authorized to state their opinions about public affairs in
the same way as the best and those that are competent. In democracy,
conflict and dispute, agonism and conflict among equals that all pretend to
tell the truth, degenerate into seduction by orators who flatter the crowd in
the assemblies. If the right to speak is handed out without control, “anyone
can say anything.” How can we then distinguish the good from the bad
orator? How can we produce an ethical differentiation? The truth, enemies
of democracy always claim, cannot be spoken in a political field defined by
the “indifference between speaking subjects”: “Democracy cannot make
room for an ethical differentiation of subjects that speak, deliberate, and are
capable of deciding.” 15
14 See William James, La volonté de croire (Paris: Seuil, 2005) [The Will to Believe, and
Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 1897].
15 Foucault, Le courage de la vérité, 46.
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