Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governmentality

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ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS That which Rancière defends in the social democracy of the welfare state is a public sphere of interlocution where the workers (the trade unions in their reformist version) are included as political subjects, and where work is no longer a private, but a public matter: One claims in bad faith that the institutions of welfare and solidarity that are born out of the workers’ democratic struggle, and that are administered and co-administered by representatives of the contributors, are the products of a proliferating and paternalist state. In struggling against this mythic State, one attacks precisely those institutions of non-state solidarity within which other competences and capacities to take care of the common and of the future than those of governmental elites were formed. 20 The major problem with Rancière’s position (and more generally, that of the Left) is the difficulty of criticizing and surpassing the model that undoubtedly has broadened democracy in the twentieth century, but today is one of the major obstacles to the emergence of new political objects and subjects, since it is in principle incapable of including other political subjects than the state, the trade unions and the employers. The political model that emerges from Foucault’s analysis of Greek democracy is entirely different. Why does he refer to a philosophical school like the Cynics, a “marginal,” “minoritarian,” and “popular” school whose doctrines are relatively unstructured, in order to interrogate political subjectivation? What Foucault seems to suggest is the following: we have moved away from the dialectical and totalizing politics of the “demos.” For Rancière, “What has no part—the poor in antiquity, the third estate or the modern proletariat—can in fact have no other part than nothing or the whole.” 21 However, it is difficult to see how the Cynics, like the political 20 Jacques Rancière, La haine de la démocratie (Paris: La Fabrique, 2005), 91. I bought this book on the day of its release (September 2005) when I came back from an action undertaken by the Coordination des Intermittents et Précaires [“Association of Day- Laborers]. It was an explosive event, and they had occupied the room where one of these reunions in the Cultural Ministry was held, bringing together the state, the trade unions, and the employers, thus denying the status of political subject to everyone but themselves. Leafing through the book that same evening, I was struck when reading this passage. That liberals attack the welfare state is no reason for us to confine ourselves to a defensive attitude and silence the critique that different political movements directed against it in the ‘70s (it produces dependence and exercises power over the body), a critique which is continued today (it produces inequality, social and political exclusion, it controls the lives of individuals etc.). 21 Rancière, La Mésentente, 27. 165
MAURIZIO LAZZARATO movements after ’68 (the women’s movement or that of the unemployed) would be able to claim, “we are the people,” or, we are at the same time “the part and the whole.” In Foucault’s model, the problem is not to count those that have no part, or to demonstrate that they speak the same language as their masters, but it is to undertake a “transvaluation” of all values, which also, and first of all, concerns those that have no part and their mode of subjectivation. In this transvaluation, equality is connected to difference, and political equality to ethical differentiation. Through the Cynics we also once more encounter Nietzsche—these cynics that have entered the history of philosophy in the guise of “counterfeiters,” as those that have altered the “value” of money. The motto of the Cynics, “change the value of money,” refers both to the alteration of money (Nomisma) and of the law (Nomos). The Cynics did not demand recognition, they did not want to be counted or included. They criticized the institutions and modes of life of their contemporaries, by experimentation with and testing themselves against others, and against the world. The problem of how to constitute the self as an ethico-political subject also involves particular truth-games: No longer the truth-game of apprenticeship, of the acquisition of true propositions and knowledge, as in Platonism, but the truth-game that bears on oneself, on what one is capable of doing, on the level of dependence one attains, on the progress to be made […] These truth games do not derive from the mathemata, they are not things that are taught and learned, they are exercises performed on the self – exercise, testing of oneself, a combat in this world. 22 The political truth-games practiced in the constitution of another life and another world are thus no longer those of recognition, demonstration, and argumentative logic, but those of a politics of experimentation that binds together both the rights and formation of an ethos. The opposition between Plato and the Cynics is to some extent reminiscent of the one between Rancière and Foucault. 22 Foucault, Le courage de la vérité, 210. 166
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Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governme
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Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governme
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Contents Introduction: Foucault, Bi
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INTRODUCTION point, and we find res
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INTRODUCTION stantially new recepti
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INTRODUCTION the body politic, whic
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INTRODUCTION 3) Enlightenment and m
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INTRODUCTION at least in Cynicism,
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INTRODUCTION i.e. as a juridical pr
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INTRODUCTION undergoes instead a de
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INTRODUCTION unsure about how to ha
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INTRODUCTION economy, which displac
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INTRODUCTION The two main cases tha
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INTRODUCTION like a sign of bad fai
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INTRODUCTION them as residual and m
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INTRODUCTION munity, and individual
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INTRODUCTION contemporary subjectiv
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THOMAS LEMKE Over the last twenty y
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THOMAS LEMKE In this article I will
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THOMAS LEMKE very much political; t
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THOMAS LEMKE Programs, strategies,
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THOMAS LEMKE Thus it seems the focu
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THOMAS LEMKE social movements of hi
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THOMAS LEMKE The principal focus of
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THOMAS LEMKE However, there is anot
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THOMAS LEMKE narrative to be used f
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JOHANNA OKSALA not merely as an eco
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JOHANNA OKSALA Reagan and Thatcher
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JOHANNA OKSALA The market had been
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JOHANNA OKSALA This regime also imp
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JOHANNA OKSALA liberalism and neoli
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JOHANNA OKSALA discussion of neolib
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JOHANNA OKSALA game for self-intere
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JOHANNA OKSALA been given ad hoc in
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JOHANNA OKSALA the terms of the opp
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Biopolitical Life Catherine Mills A
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BIOPOLITICAL LIFE particular, the t
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BIOPOLITICAL LIFE recognises beatit
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BIOPOLITICAL LIFE heroic conditions
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BIOPOLITICAL LIFE Nazism, Esposito
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BIOPOLITICAL LIFE given environment
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BIOPOLITICAL LIFE complete vitalisa
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BIOPOLITICAL LIFE Foucault suggests
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BIOPOLITICAL LIFE that different so
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Towards an Affirmative Biopolitics
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TOWARDS AN AFFIRMATIVE BIOPOLITICS
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Biopolitics of Scale: Architecture,
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BIOPOLITICS OF SCALE Hansen’s pro
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Image 2: Oskar Hansen, “Poland’
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Image 4: Oskar Hansen, “Western B
Page 115 and 116: Image 6: “Diagram of human relati
Page 117 and 118: ŁUKASZ STANEK scales as increasing
Page 119 and 120: ŁUKASZ STANEK unit, defined princi
Page 121 and 122: ŁUKASZ STANEK interrelationship wa
Page 123 and 124: ŁUKASZ STANEK in France, Netherlan
Page 125 and 126: HELENA MATTSSON tecture as a set of
Page 127 and 128: HELENA MATTSSON materials and displ
Page 129 and 130: HELENA MATTSSON though they are not
Page 131 and 132: HELENA MATTSSON experiences: it was
Page 134 and 135: Neuropower: Is Resistance Fertile?
Page 136 and 137: NEUROPOWER: IS RESISTANCE FERTILE?
Page 146 and 147: Foucault and Lacan: Who is Master?
Page 148 and 149: FOUCAULT AND LACAN: WHO IS MASTER?
Page 156 and 157: Enunciation and Politics A Parallel
Page 158 and 159: ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS is no long
Page 160 and 161: ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS Parrhesia
Page 162 and 163: ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS risk of ta
Page 164 and 165: ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS These argu
Page 168 and 169: ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS Logos and
Page 170 and 171: ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS other hand
Page 172 and 173: ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS Foucault t
Page 174: ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS cracy, sin
Page 177 and 178: ADEENA MEY Rancière: The distribut
Page 179 and 180: ADEENA MEY Foucault, namely that of
Page 181 and 182: ADEENA MEY different way of being.
Page 183 and 184: ADEENA MEY whom the affirmation of
Page 186 and 187: Roundtable Sven-Olov Wallenstein Bi
Page 188 and 189: ROUNDTABLE that engenders an immedi
Page 190 and 191: ROUNDTABLE on the relation between
Page 192 and 193: ROUNDTABLE self does that at certai
Page 194 and 195: ROUNDTABLE what could the referent
Page 196 and 197: ROUNDTABLE Vikki Bell I have to con
Page 198 and 199: ROUNDTABLE everything changes after
Page 200 and 201: ROUNDTABLE Johanna Oksala Thanks, J
Page 202 and 203: Authors Maurizio Lazzarato is socio
Page 204 and 205: AUTHORS Julian Reid has taught at t
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