Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governmentality

FOUCAULT, POLITICS, AND FAILURE
logies and rationalities constituting governmental practices. Political struggles
cannot be confined to the expression of a contradictory logic or an
antagonistic relation; they have their own dynamics, temporalities and
techniques. 37 With due focus on the “parasitic relationship” 38 of governments—honing
in specifically upon their “failures” and “shortcomings”—
what becomes possible is the, circumventing of any functionalist bias. If
contestation is limited to the refusal of programs, then the following
question arises: what exactly does “failure” mean? Since the criteria of
judging both failure and success are an integral part of rationalities, they
cannot be regarded as external yardsticks. In fact, the “success” of a program
is no guarantee of its continuation, since success might eventually
abolish the material foundations or preconditions for a given program,
making it redundant thereby. Conversely, the putative “failure” of a program
could mean its “success,” since it might give rise to “strategic reinvestment.”
Put differently: a program might work “well” because it does not
work at all or only works “badly,” for example, by creating the very
problems it is supposedly there to react to. Therefore, the “failure” of the
prison as a means to combat criminality might possibly help to account for
its “raison d'être.” 39
Politics, materiality, and space
Jacques Donzelot has pointed out a tendency in the governmentality
literature to treat governmental regimes as things that “are always analyzed
at their ‘technical’ level, never in terms of a political criterion or in terms of
value.” 40 According to Donzelot, the rather neutral rhetoric deployed in
governmentality studies is the result of a dual process: on the one hand, the
deliberate focus on the programmatic and technical aspects of government
and, on the other, an insight into the problems associated with reductionist
and simplistic forms of analyzing and criticizing neoliberalism. While Foucault
considered himself a political intellectual—actively engaged with the
37 Andrew Barry, Political Machines, 6. According to Foucault, power relations and
“strategies of struggle” are characterized by an agonistic relationship: “a relationship that
is at the same time mutual incitement and struggle; less of a face-to-face confrontation
that paralyzes both sides than a permanent provocation.” Foucault, “The Subject and
Power,” 342.
38 Tania Murray Li, The Will to Improve, 1.
39 See also Albert. O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for
Capitalism Before its Triumph (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).
40 Jacques Donzelot and Colin Gordon, “Governing Liberal Societies,” 54.
45