Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governmentality

Introduction: Foucault, Biopolitics,
and Governmentality
Sven-Olov Wallenstein
The idea of biopolitics
Foucault’s analysis of biopolitics has produced a huge amount of responses,
and similar to his closely connected discussions of governmentality, it has
engendered a body of literature, even entire schools of thought that have
evolved far beyond the limits of his own proposals. 1 It is true that, even
before Foucault enters the scene, biopolitics has its own history; in many
respects, then, Foucault’s work constitutes an intervention into an already
complex tradition. 2 His contributions have nevertheless become a focal
1 For overviews, see Renata Brandimarte et al (eds.), Lessico di Biopolitica (Rome: Manifestolibri,
2006), Antonella Cutro (ed.), Biopolitica: Storia e attualità di un concetto
(Verona: Ombrecorte, 2005), and Thomas Lemke, “From State Biology to the Government
of Life: Historical Dimensions and Contemporary Perspectives of ‘Biopolitics’,” Journal
of Classical Sociology, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2010). A rich material can also be found in the two
series of periodical publications that have been dedicated to the topic: Zeitschrift für
Biopolitik, edited by Andreas Mietzsch, and Research in Biopolitics, edited by Albert Somit.
2 The term “biopolitics” seems to have been invented by the Swedish political scientist
Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922), who understands it on the basis of an organicist conception
of the state as “life-form” and “ethnic individuality.” This life-form comprises social
groups that struggle for existence, but also cooperate, in a dynamic process that makes
up the life of state, which Kjellén proposes to study under the rubric “biopolitics.”
Kjellén’s main work on the theme is Staten som lifsform (Stockholm: Hugo Geber, 1916);
on Kjellén, see Fredrika Lagergren, The Versatile Scientist: Rudolf Kjellén and the Theory
of Biopolitics (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien, 1998).
Similar conceptions were widespread at the time, and political theories were also proposed
by professional biologists, such as Jakob von Uexküll’s Staatsbiologie (Anatomie,
Physiologie, Pathologie des Staates) (Berlin: Gebr. Paetel, 1920), which launches a harsh
anti-democratic agenda on the basis of his biological theories. The idea subsequently
becomes particularly rampant in Nazism, with its racist and eugenic visions of a purified
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