Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governmentality

THOMAS LEMKE
very much political; the result of struggles and conflicts, of altered
compromises and new alliances. 19
There is a second problem with the idea of a continuous displacement
and rationalization of technologies of rule. Studies of governmentality tend
to emphasize the “productive” side of power at the expense of the investigation
of “repressive” and authoritarian mechanisms. At the center of the
analytical interest are governmental technologies that operate not by
exercising violence and constraint but by effecting “powers of freedom.” 20
Such works often ignore or underestimate the role of violent and
“irrational” forms of politics, e.g. the mobilization of fear or seemingly
“uneconomic” populist discourses. By adhering to a rather abstract concept
of rationality, studies of governmentality have tended to neglect the political
significance of expressive and emotional factors in favor of conscious calculations
and elaborated concepts. 21 Especially since 9/11, the intimate
relationship between governmentality and sovereignty, between neoliberalism
and discipline, freedom and violence, can no longer be ignored.
The thesis of a continuous rationalization of power is not only wrong
because it obscures the enduring significance of repression and violence in
contemporary forms of rule. More fundamentally, it ignores the internal
relationship and co-determination between “rational” and “irrational”
elements, freedom and authoritarianism, that characterize (neo-)liberal
government. Mariana Valverde has, for example, argued that the constitution
of the liberal subject not only necessitates a permanent work of
moralization and disciplination of the self; it also makes possible the governing
of “backward” or “primitive” races, classes or sexes in order to bring
them up to the level of autonomous liberal subjects—with the use of
disciplinary or “despotic” techniques. 22 In the same vein, Barry Hindess has
19 See Pat O’Malley, “Risk and Responsibility,” in Barry et al, Foucault and Political
Reason, 192-198.
20 See Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999). David Garland has stressed that the governmentality
literature tends not to distinguish adequately between the concept of agency and the
concept of freedom. They are often conflated, but it is important to insist on their difference:
“The truth is that the exercise of governmental power, and particularly neoliberal
techniques of government, rely upon, and stimulate, agency while simultaneously
reconfiguring (rather than removing) the constraints upon the freedom of choice of the
agent.” Garland, “’Governmentality’” and the Problem of Crime: Foucault, Criminology,
Sociology,” Theoretical Criminology 1(2) (1997): 199-204, cit. at 197, emphasis in original.
21 See David Garland, “’Governmentality’ and the Problem of Crime.”
22 Mariana Valverde, “’Despotism’ and Ethical Liberal Governance,” Economy & Society
25(3) (1996): 357-72.
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