Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governmentality

INTRODUCTION
i.e. as a juridical problem; it can be seen as a form of deviant behavior that
must be corrected through the application of various techniques, i.e. as a
disciplinary problem; and, finally, it can be taken as a statistical phenomenon,
where one must balance the losses and gains of disciplinary measures,
and perhaps even allow for a certain latitude of crime, according to which
the problem is formulated in terms of security. This third solution is based
on probabilities, on a calculus of cost. The problem it poses is how to attain
an optimal balance. Foucault cautions us against seeing these three models
as a chronological development from the archaic to the modern, or as
constituting a path towards increasing rationality, instead they are always
co-present as complex structures where, in each case, one of the elements
exercises dominance over the others. Thus, for example, security integrates
the juridical and the disciplinary, but in a subordinate form, just as the juridical
and the disciplinary contain the other moments.
In the following lecture Foucault proceeds by studying other aspects of
the new “apparatus” (dispositif) of security: its spatial dimension, the implications
of chance and event, techniques of normalization, and finally the
connection between security and population, which he claims to be the
fundamental discovery of eighteenth century political thought. Here it may
suffice to point to a few basic traits. Sovereignty, Foucault says, is exerted
over a territory and a multiplicity of political subjects; discipline is applied
to singular bodies, to their affects and passions, and the grid “individual” is
both a technique of application and an intended result; security, finally,
relates to the population and its inherent dynamic, as a living entity
following laws that politics must obey, and in this sense the population
constitutes the physis of politics. In all three cases we find a pervasive spatial
implication, a point borne out by Foucault’s use of the city as a common
denominator (for more on Foucault’s relation to architecture and urbanism,
see both Łukasz Stanek’s and Helena Mattsson’s contributions below). The
first example is a text by Alexandre Le Maître, La métropolitée (1682), 15
which provides the spatial schema for sovereignty. Le Maître conceives a
three-part structure, corresponding to the division of peasants, craftsmen,
15 Very little is known about Le Maître—who in fact, contrary to what Foucault says,
seems to have been one of the first to use the term ”population”—except his two works,
the above cited La Metropolitée, ou, De l'établissement des villes capitales, de leur utilité,
passive & active, de l'union de leurs parties & de leur anatomie, de leur commerce, etc.,
and Oeuvre de Troye ou de l’excellence et de l’anciennité des fortifications demontrées par
les modèles de la nature, les passions (1683). For discussions of the context of these texts,
see Claude Lévy, “Un plan d'aménagement du territoire au XVIIe siècle: ‘La Métropolitée’
d’Alexandre Le Maître,” Population, Vol. 12 (1957): 103-114.
18