Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governmentality

ENUNCIATION AND POLITICS
other hand the private administering of the house. The point is not to
oppose “logos” with “existence,” but to take up a place in the gap between
them, in order to interrogate modes of life and institutions. For the Cynics,
there can be no true life that would not be another life, at the same time of a
“form of existence, self-manifestation, a plastic truth, as well as the task of
demonstrating convincing, and persuading through discourse.” 24
In Rancière, just as in most of contemporary critical theories (Virno,
Butler, Agamben, Michon) there is a logocentric prejudice. Despite
Rancière’s criticism of Aristotle, we are always dependent on, and within
the framework of, the formulas of Greek philosophy: man as the only animal
endowed with language, and a political animal because he has language.
When the Cynics attack the “distribution” that the logos establishes
between man and animal, they attack the foundations of Greek and
Western philosophy and culture:
In ancient thought, animality was the point of absolute differentiation
for the human being. It was by distinguishing himself from animality
that the human being affirmed and manifested his humanity. Animality
was always a point of repulsion in this constitution of man as a human
being endowed with reason. 25
The Cynics do not dramatize the gap between equality and police, but
instead place emphasis upon the practices of “true life” and its institutions,
by displaying a shameful and scandalous life, a life manifesting itself as a
challenge and an exercise of a practice of animality.
The distribution of the sensible, or Division and production
In Rancière, political subjectivation implies an ethos and truth-games. It
requires a mode of constitution of the subject through language and reason,
which practices the truth-games of “demonstration,” “argumentation,” and
interlocution. Even in Rancière, politics cannot be defined as a specific
activity, since it is articulated in relation to ethics (constitution of a subject
of reason and speech) and to truth (discursive practices that demonstrate
and argue). It is difficult to see how it could be otherwise.
24 Foucault, Le courage de la vérité, 288.
25 Ibid, 244.
169