Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governmentality

THOMAS LEMKE
In this article I will focus on some of the shortcomings and blind spots
present in governmentality studies. I will address three problems in particular:
first, the idea of a historical succession of sovereignty, discipline and
government, prominent in the literature on governmentality; second, some
limitations in the analysis of programs and the role of failure in studies of
governmentality; and third the question of how politics, materiality and
space are conceived in this research perspective.
Sovereignty, discipline, government
Foucault’ use of the terms “government” and “governmentality” is marked
by inconsistency, tending to change over time. 11 In a very broad sense,
government refers to the “conduct of conduct,” 12 and designates rationalities
and technologies that seek to guide human beings. Here “governmentality”
denotes power relations in general, and Foucault employs the
term in order to gain an “analytical grid for these relations of power.” 13 In a
more specific sense, governmentality refers to a quite distinct form of
power. It stands for a historical process closely connected to the emergence
of the modern state, the political figure of “population,” and the constitution
of the economy as a specific domain of reality. This process is
characterized by the “pre-eminence over all other types of power—
sovereignty, discipline, and so on—of the type of power that we can call
‘government.’” 14 In this latter interpretation, Foucault seems to endorse the
idea of a continuous shift or historical succession of sovereignty, discipline
and government.
Building on this idea, there has been a tendency in the governmentality
literature to use the notion of governmentality as a historical meta-narrative
that leads from state reason, via classical liberalism and the welfare state, to
contemporary neoliberal forms of government. 15 Government has been seen
11 See Thomas Lemke, Eine Kritik der politischen Vernunft: Foucaults Analyse der
modernen Gouvernementalität (Hamburg/Berlin: Argument, 1997), 197-8; Mitchell
Dean, Governmentality, 16; Michel Senellart, “Course Context,” in Michel Foucault,
Security, Territory, Population, 386-391
12 Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” in James D. Faubion (ed.), Power, trans. R.
Hurley et al (New York: The New Press, 2000), 341.
13 Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 186
14 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 108
15 See Thomas Osborne, “Techniken und Subjekte: Von den ‘Governmentality Studies’
zu den ‘Studies of Governmentality,’” in Wolfgang Pircher and Ramón Reichert (eds.),
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