JHP - Biebricher 2008 - Genealogy and Governmentality

Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396
www.brill.nl/jph
Genealogy and Governmentality*

Thomas Biebricher
Department of Political Science, University of Florida
Abstract The essay aims at an assessment of whether and to what extent the history of governmentality can be considered to be a genealogy. To this eect a generic account of core tenets of Foucauldian genealogy is developed. The three core tenets highlighted are (1) a radically contingent view of history that is (2) expressed in a distinct style and (3) highlights the impact of power on this history. After a brief discussion of the concept of governmentality and a descriptive summary of its history, this generic account is used as a measuring device to be applied to the history of governmentality. While both, the concept of governmentality and also its history retain certain links to genealogical precepts, my overall conclusion is that particularly the history of governmentality (and not necessarily Foucaults more programmatic statements about it) departs from these precepts in signicant ways. Not only is there a notable dierence in style that cannot be accounted for entirely by the fact that this history is produced in the medium of lectures. Aside from a rather abstract consideration of the importance of societal struggles, revolts and other forms of resistance, there is also little reference to the role of these phenomena in the concrete dynamics of governmental shifts that are depicted in the historical narrative. Finally, in contrast to the historical contingency espoused by genealogy and the programmatic statements about governmentality, the actual
The Author: Thomas Biebricher is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Currently he is working on a book manuscript that discusses Foucaults analytics of state in the context of Neo-Marxist, Neo-Institutionalist and Neo-Pluralist approaches to the state. *) An earlier version of this paper was presented during a workshop session on genealogy, hosted by the Society for the Philosophy of History at the American Philosophical Association Meeting 2008 (Pacic Division) in Pasadena, CA. I would like to thank the panel members as well as the audience for a fruitful discussion and Mark Bevir and Martin Saar, in particular, for their valuable comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank Les Thiele and Anne Wolf for their help with the nal version of the manuscript.
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/187226308X336001
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T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396
history of the latter can be plausibly, albeit unsympathetically, read in a rather teleological fashion according to which the transformations of governmentality amount to the unfolding of an initially implicit notion of governing that is subsequently realised in ever more consistent ways. In the nal section of the essay I turn towards the eld of governmentality studies, arguing that some of the more problematic tendencies in this research tradition can be traced back to Foucaults own account. In particular, the monolithic conceptualisation of governmentality and the implicit presentism of an excessive focus on Neoliberalism found in many of the studies in governmentality can be linked back to problems in Foucaults own history of governmenality. The paper concludes with suggestions for a future research agenda for the governmentality studies that point beyond Foucaults own account and its respective limitations. Keywords Foucault, genealogy, governmentality, governmentality studies, history
If one were to list a few keywords associated with the name of Michel Foucault, governmentality and genealogy would likely rank among the most prominent. Still, the conceptual relation between these two terms has not received much attention from Foucault scholars. There are, to be sure, notable exceptions that aim at what could be a called a comprehensive mapping of Foucaults project(s) and thus oer hypotheses regarding how its genealogical phase relates to the relatively brief period at the end of the 1970s when Foucault investigates historically variable governmentalities.1 Although these accounts rightfully emphasize the shifts in Foucaults understanding of power, it is implicitly assumed by most authors that his historical-strategic analytics of state still adhere to the same historiographical precepts postulated in the classic genealogical works. The main dierence, accordingly, would be an enlarged scope of Foucaults analytics that now come to include matters of state and subject (trans-) formation as well as a dierent ontology of power. In this essay I address the question, to what extent the history of governmentality can be accurately referred to as a genealogy.
1) See T. Lemke, Eine Kritik der politischen Vernunft (Hamburg: Argument, 1997); T. Lemke, Der Kopf des Knigs Recht, Disziplin und Regierung bei Foucault, Berliner Journal fr Soziologie, 3 (1999), 415434.
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In the rst section, a number of central theoretical/methodological tenets of Foucaultian genealogy will be identied. Using these as a yardstick, in the following section I will take a look at the history of governmentality and oer an assessment regarding the extent to which that history actually is a genealogy. In the nal section, I draw out some broader implications of the (in-)congruence of genealogy and governmentality pertaining to the eld of Governmentality Studies. Addressing the link between the two concepts involves a number of difculties, but as I will try to show, these are not insuperable. As scholars attest, Foucaults genealogical method is rather dicult to pin down. First of all, Foucaults own use of the term is inconsistent. Furthermore, the locus classicus of Foucaults meta-reection on genealogy, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, is a textual veil dance. Here Foucaults discussion of Nietzsches genealogical stance, departs signicantly from that which can be inferred from Nietzsches own texts.2 It is Foucault who peers out from behind Nietzsches mask. In short, it is extremely dicult to give precise contours to Foucaults concept of genealogy. Nevertheless, I will propose a generic account for the heuristic purpose of formulating an immanent critique of Foucaults history of governmentality. This history is in many ways profoundly un-genealogical. As I will demonstrate in the nal section of this paper, the one-sided realisation of the critical-analytical potential of governmentality in many works produced in the eld of the Governmentality Studies can be traced back to this tendency. What is at stake in addressing the relation between genealogy and governmentality is more than the uncontroversial assertion that Foucaults thought evolves and shifts over time. It concerns the possibility of writing history in a way that enables us to nd out who we are, in our present actuality,3 as Foucault once put it in a reference to Kant but also that we do not have to be that way.
1. What is Genealogy? The question how to dene genealogy is one that has preoccupied many commentators over the course of the last hundred years. It is impossible to
2)
M. Saar, Genealogie als Kritik, Eine Geschichte des Subjekts nach Nietzsche und Foucault (Frankfurt: Campus, 2007), 198. 3) M. Foucault, Foucault Live. Collected Interviews 19611984, ed. Sylvere Lotringer (New York: Semiotexte, 1989), 407.
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review the many outstanding studies done on the nature of genealogy in Foucault, let alone the Nietzschean version. In my attempt to oer a generic working denition of Foucaultian genealogy I will conne myself to some of his own characterisations of genealogy and the work of some recent commentators, most notably Saar and Dean.4 In contrast to Foucaults own frequent resort to a form of negative theology, I will begin by outlining a couple of positive traits of genealogy, particularly relying on Foucaults own work and the elaborations by Saar. In a second step, I will attempt to sharpen the core contours of genealogy with a discussion of what it is not and what it is directed against, drawing, again, on Foucaults own work and the comments by Dean. The latter is a crucial interlocutor for my argument not only because he provides a pointed delimitation of genealogy from other modes of writing history, but also because he is one of the most adamant advocates of an interpretation of governmentality as being genealogical in character. Genealogy, trivially, is a way of writing history that is driven by a certain understanding of history. My working denition will focus on three interrelated aspects of this mode of historiography. Genealogy is imbued with a view of history as a complex multi-dimensional process that is characterised by contingency and discontinuity (1). This discontinuity is partly an eect of the impact of power, i.e. historical phenomena are related to incessant struggles between varying parties and these struggles are sedimented in systems of meaning and representation (2). The genealogist writes the chronicles of these struggles. However, knowing about the entwinement of power and truth, she views aspirations of historical accuracy and reasonable argument aiming at objectivity with suspicion, instead relying on highly rhetorical textual strategies in order to produce hypothetical ante-histories of the present written from a self-consciously partisan perspective (3). (1) Even before the genealogical turn, Foucaults archaeology of epistemes and discourses emphasized the discontinuous character of the history of systems of knowledge that did not follow the course of a Popperian logic of inquiry or any other overarching pattern. This outlook on history as a site of fragmentation and contingency is conrmed in Nietzsche, Genealogy, History: genealogy disturbs what was previously considered immobile; it fragments what was thought unied; it shows the heterogeneity of what
See Saar, Genealogie als Kritik; M. Dean, Governmentality. Power and Rule in Modern Society (London: Sage, 1999).
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was imagined consistent with itself.5 Drawing on Nietzsche, Foucault highlights the extent to which this intention involves a rejection of any notion of Ursprung, i.e. a singular starting point of history, pristine and uncontaminated by contingency. Instead, genealogy will cultivate the details and accidents that accompany every beginning.6 The genealogical history is one that pays close attention to small causes that produce massive eects, although Foucault would admittedly balk at the vocabulary of causality used here. Still, genealogys intuitions are shared to some extent by more conventional schools of thought concerned with history and politics. Notions of path-dependency and critical junctures widely used in Historical Institutionalism, for example, express similar views on a process of history in which contingent and often miniscule factors become signicant in changing the trajectory of institutions or discourses defying any overarching logic that could be discerned a priori.7 There are a number of intricately related eects that accrue to this kind of historiography. If the present is the outcome of contingent multi-dimensional processes then it becomes more and more dicult to view it as necessary. Thus, genealogy sheds a thoroughly destabilizing light on the history of the present, in which present patterns of thought and action, identities and institutions are denaturalised. To be sure, genealogy shares some of its denaturalising eects with other historically oriented approaches in political theory such as Marxism. Any persuasive attempt to demonstrate that the past has been profoundly dierent from the present, like Marxs elaboration on the dierent forms of property in The German Ideology, leaves the present bereft of its implicit status as being virtually without alternative. If the past is dierent from the present, then the present can be seen as a future past that is potentially quite dierent from that future. This general denaturalising eect of many historical approaches is radicalised in genealogys insistence on a discontinuous history that does not lend itself to the totalising claims of some Marxist schools regarding the overall logic of the course of history. After all, even if the present is no longer deemed natural in the sense of its partaking in an immutable
M. Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History in L. Cahoone (ed.), From Modernism to Postmodernism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 365. 6) Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, 364. 7) See P. Pierson, Politics in Time. History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton: PU Press, 2004).
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cosmic order it could still be seen as the necessary outcome of an historical process presumed intelligible for the historian. But Foucaults interest is exactly the opposite, namely to nd out to what extent that which is given to us in the present is not necessary and could be dierent. Foucault himself has expressed this overall thrust in the following way: These things have been made, they can be unmade, as long as we know how it was that they were made.8 Exposing phenomena in their utter historicity, consequently, can be an operation that could almost be described as emancipatory despite the reservations Foucault might have about notions of liberation etc. in the sense that it opens up a space of concrete freedom, that is of possible transformation.9 It is important, though, to emphasize the rather circumscribed meaning of emancipation in this statement, if it is not to assimilate Foucault unduly to the thought of Marcuse and other Critical Theorists. Foucaults genealogy harbours little chiliastic hope for a liberation from power, oppression or exploitation in general. Thought, action and identities are always subject to forms of power and domination. The hope of the genealogist is a more modest one claiming that things simply do not have to be the way they are and can be changed. In that sense it aims at the liberation of our imagination from being held captive by the status quo.10 (2) The second aspect of genealogy I want to highlight is closely related to the rst one, but it still deserves to be mentioned separately given its wide-ranging implications. There are a number of tenets that set genealogy apart from the archaeological framework of the late 1960s, however, the introduction of an analytics of power is easily the most important one. Obviously, a comprehensive discussion of Foucaults notion of power lies far beyond the scope of this paper. For the present purposes a number of basic points will have to suce. Foucault pointedly states that genealogy is concerned with the endlessly repeated play of dominations, assuming that the forces operating in history are not controlled by destiny [. . .] but respond to haphazard conicts.11 Smoldering even underneath a legally
8) M. Foucault, Critical Theory/Intellectual History in M. Kelly (ed.), Critique and Power. Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), 127. 9) Foucault, Critical Theory/Intellectual History, 127. 10) See D. Owen, Criticism and Captivity: On Genealogy and Critical Theory, European Journal of Philosophy, 10 (2002), 231245. 11) Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, 371.
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pacied surface of societal relations lies the incessant dynamic of struggles and conicts. The frameworks of meaning, from the legal system to varying forms of thought, to the very notion of truth carry the mark of power, i.e. past confrontations are encapsulated in them and they are the site and object of present struggles. Writing history, thus, involves deciphering the link between changes in discourses and dispositifs as well as the dynamic of societal struggles lurking behind the former. It is not the least the a priori erratic logic of a play of overpowering and resistance that makes for the discontinuous character of history, which is full of substitutions, displacements, disguised conquests, and systematic reversals.12 While Foucault thinks that the random play of forces can retrospectively be made intelligible as crystallizing into more global strategies, from the participant perspective these processes are open-ended and thus feed into the contingency of history in general. (3) Finally, genealogys distinct prole comes to the fore when the position of the historian and the concrete mode of depicting this discontinuous and power-laden history are taken into consideration. The genealogist posits knowledge, truth and any other system of signication as standing in a circular relation with power. Consequently, she self-consciously abandons traditional claims to objectivity and reasonable argument in her account, knowing that her view of history is one perspective among others, all of which are more or less partisan in character. Thus, instead of pretending to be able to rise above the complex of power/knowledge the genealogist embraces her embeddedness in power relations. This means that the mode of argument will have to be shifted away from conventional truth claims towards a hypothetical and strongly rhetorical account of history that often presents itself in the form of what if?.13 It is with reference to this somewhat unique textual form of genealogy that Foucault makes the following statements in an illuminating interview with Duccio Trombadori that are worth quoting at length:
The problem of the truth of what I say is a very dicult one for me; in fact, its the central problem. [. . .] what I say in my books can be veried or invalidated in the same way as any other book of history. In spite of that, the people who read me [. . .] often tell me with a laugh, You know very well that what
12) 13)
Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, 369. Saar, Genealogie als Kritik, 222.
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you say is really just ction. I always reply, Of course, theres no question of it being anything else but ction.14
Foucaults historical depictions in Discipline and Punish are provocations and challenges aimed at the reader: if this narrative of punishing, its link to pedagogy, medicine, the legal system and religious confessional practices were really true, what would you do?15 To be sure, a more measured account would have to introduce qualiers, caveats and nuance, but the point of genealogy cannot be historical accuracy if it does not want to risk relapsing into a framework in which truth can be disentangled from power. Instead. Foucaults genealogies are heavily loaded with rhetorical devices from hyperbole to suggestive analogies and the verbalisation of nouns that are to convey a sense of urgency while at the same time cloaking themselves in a matter-of-fact scientic language. This sets genealogies apart from both outright ction and unveiled political manifestos.16 As Martin Saar has pointed out, genealogies presuppose readers that have sucient reexivity, sensitivity and even courage to let themselves be aected by these narratives and the creeping uneasiness that they can potentially unleash.17 Thus, genealogies are not critical in the sense of giving individuals good reasons, be they moral or economic in nature, why they should engage in resistance. The genealogist has to hope that her idiosyncratic arrangement of historical materials and the ominous air produced through rhetorical devices contributes to the individual experiencing a given state of aairs as subjectively unbearable.18 Given the historically contingent character of identities etc. that is armed in genealogical
M. Foucault, Power. Essential Works of Foucault 19541984, ed. James Faubion (New York: New Press, 1994), 242. See also Foucault, Foucault Live, 261 and T. Biebricher, Habermas, Foucault and Nietzsche: A Double Misunderstanding, Foucault Studies, 3 (2005), 126, available online at www.foucault-studies.com. 15) See D. C. Hoy, Introduction in D.C. Hoy (ed.), Foucault: A Critical Reader (Oxford/ New York: Blackwell, 1986 and F. Jameson, Postmodernism, or. The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, New Left Review, 146 (1984), 5393 on the ambivalent eect of such claustrophobic accounts on the mobilisation of individuals to resist. 16) H. White, The Historiography of Anti-Humanism in B. Smart (ed.), Foucault. Critical Assessments Vol. III (London/New York: Routledge, 1994). 17) Saar, Genealogie als Kritik, 313. 18) Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures dicult. Foucault, Foucault Live, 155.
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accounts, the potential refusal to endure unbearable conditions any longer can result in an attempt of transformation. Now that I have introduced what I consider three core tenets of genealogy I will add a couple of explicit negative delimitations that can be inferred from those core tenets in order to sharpen the genealogical prole. The most obvious antipodes of genealogy are linear and/or teleological accounts of history: in Foucaults own words, genealogy rejects [. . .] indefinite teleologies.19 Linear accounts of history would be found in Condorcet, Auguste Comte, E.B. Tylor or James Frazer who envision a steady course of progress discernable in history. Today, linear models of history have few adherents so there is no need to dwell on this case for too long. Teleological accounts are more interesting because a range of dierent approaches can be subsumed under this category. One obvious candidate is Hegels philosophy of history that assumes the long-winded unfolding of the world spirit and its ultimate return to itself to be the telos of history. Teleological accounts come in many forms; often they borrow the eschatological structure of the great spiritual narratives of the Judaeo-Christian tradition like Marxism does. It should be clear from what has been said about the core tenets of genealogy that it is incommensurable with such accounts due to its stress on contingency. Furthermore, as already mentioned, a Rankean attempt to describe how things really were, that is, objectively, is also anathema to genealogy. Attaining a view of history that is untroubled by the hermeneutical situatedness of the observer and unperturbed by the web of power relations, out of which knowledge emerges, is incompatible with genealogys view on history as a succession of struggles and an incessant play of forces that does not leave the historian unaected. Dean adds more specicity to these somewhat global claims when he derives a strong anti-presentist orientation of genealogy from its core elements. He states that genealogy aims at a view of history that counters a narcissistic xation on the present, which can take the form of Hegelian and contemporary liberal notions of an end of history (Fukuyama) that supposedly has been reached. According to Dean, genealogys anti-presentist stance also extends to the mirror image of these visions of the present as the culmination point of an ascending history, i.e. the interpretation of the present as the apocalyptic low point of a dystopian process of history. The
19)
Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, 361.
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darker writings of the Critical Theory tradition that view the present through the lens of a totally administered society (Adorno) as well as the shrill warnings of Postmodernists such as Lyotard supposedly fall under this category.20 While it is a point of contention, whether genealogy is generally anti-presentist, the exact opposite,21 or at least shares some characteristics with the latter group, e.g. the somewhat alarmist rhetoric, the overall point that Dean attributes to Foucaultian genealogy is persuasive: we have to approach the present with the proviso that we do not allow ourselves the facile, rather theatrical declaration that his moment in which we exist is one of total perdition, in the abyss of darkness, or a triumphant daybreak, etc. It is a time like any other, or rather, a time which is never quite like any other.22 The very last part of this statement can be used to lend support to one nal precept that Dean derives from the core tenets of genealogy: Nothing, in this sense, could be more remote from the ethos of genealogy than to imagine that we can somehow do away with an analysis of the specicity of political and governmental reason and discourse by identifying an ideal type abstracted from the variety of current philosophies of government in advanced liberal democracies.23 Thus, in contrast to Max Webers attempt to employ ideal types as analytical tools, genealogy is wary of such abstractions even for heuristic purposes, it seems and instead favours an almost empiricist orientation24 towards the specics of given arrangements of governing and of power more generally. As the quote implies, Dean believes that these precepts apply to and are adhered to by the history of governmentality as well. It is now time to take a closer look at that history.
2. What is Governmentality and How Genealogical is its History? Despite the fact that I will try to show in the following that the history of governmentality departs from a genealogical historiography in signicant
Dean, Governmentality, 423. See J. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Twelve Lectures (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 276. 22) Foucault, Critical Theory/Intellectual History, 126 (my emphasis). 23) Dean, Governmentality, 58. 24) Foucaults description of genealogy as gray, meticulous, and patiently documentary comes to mind here. Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, 360.
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ways it is important to note that this is not to imply that there are no correspondences and, indeed, congruities between the two kinds of historiography. In fact, I would argue that some of the more interesting insights of governmentality are derived from a continued adherence to some genealogical intuitions such as the absence of a power centre. This leads the scholar of governmentality to view the state as a precarious entity that always exists in the context of other institutions and discourses and is, consequently, deprived of the almost metaphysical stature it acquires in rivalling state theoretical frameworks. Still, as I will try to show below, these and other analytical potentials are jeopardized by the way Foucault lets his history of governmentality unfold. I will proceed in the following way. First, the concept of governmentality will be summarised and subsequently I will try to provide a highly descriptive account of the content of the history of governmentality. I will then spell out, what the grammar of this historical narrative would have to look like in order to be considered genealogical and nally show that to a considerable extent this is not the case. Given that it is a neologism, analyses of governmentality often begin with a consideration of its semantic/etymological dimension. In fact, the standard interpretation of it being a composite term consisting of government and mentality has been questioned increasingly in recent years to the eect that it has been largely discarded and replaced by an interpretation which derives the word from the adjective gouvernmental that contrasts with sovereign.25 However, I would consider this reinterpretation as only having minor consequences since the main purchase to be gotten out of the notion of a governing mentality was that these were relatively stable frameworks of practices of governing that corresponded to certain patterns of reection (mentality) or even broader to a certain rationality. Equating a governmentality with a governing rationality in that sense still seems adequate so the ramications of the reinterpretation remain rather limited. Governing, in the way the term is used by Foucault, stands in close semantic proximity to the notion of conduct;26 it is the regulation of
M. Senellart, Course Context in M. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collge de France 197778 (New York: Palgrave, 2007), 369402. 26) M. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collge de France 197778 (New York: Palgrave, 2007), 1203.
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conduct by the more or less rational application of the appropriate technical means.27 In Foucaults own words that are worth quoting extensively, it is the interface of two types of practices:
. . . [one has to] take into account the points where the technologies of domination of individuals over one another have recourse to processes by which the individual acts upon himself. And conversely, [one] has to take into account the points where the techniques of the self are integrated into structures of coercion and domination. The contact point, where the individuals are driven by others is tied to the way they conduct themselves, is what we can call, I think government. Governing people, in the broad meaning of the word, governing people is not a way to force people to do what the governor wants; it is always a versatile equilibrium, with complementarity and conicts between techniques which assure coercion and processes through which the self is constructed or modied by himself.28
One important aspect of the governmentality concept that can be inferred from this quote is the link between practices of governing others and practices of the self. According to Foucault, particular governmentalities correspond with more or less tting individual and/or collective identities. Thus, Neoliberalism as a governmentality supposedly corresponds to the homo oeconomicus as a hegemonic practice of self, i.e. a rational utilitymaximizing individual that comes to assume the position of an entrepreneur investing in herself. What also becomes clear in this formulation is Foucaults attempt to distance the governmental form of power from notions of repression, war, and most importantly, from discipline. Government presupposes a minimal relational uidity that grants at least in principle the possibility of counter-conduct [contre-conduite]29 on behalf of the governed. In principle, this provides a possibility to genealogys requirement to link historical developments to societal struggles. Aside from these specications, the scope of the concept is in need of further determination, since governing, as Foucault acknowledges himself, is a term that can apply to a large variety of contexts and relations. Souls
B. Hindess, Discourses of Power (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996), 106. M. Foucault, About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self (Transcription of two Lectures in Dartmouth on Nov. 14th and 17th 1980, ed. By Mark Blasius), Political Theory, 1993, 198227, 203. 29) Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 201.
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and children, among other things, can be governed, but Foucault wants to focus on government in its political form30 and explicitly acknowledges that the neologism of governmentality serves as a heuristic tool to tackle the problem of the state and population.31 As we will see below, this form of government only emerges relatively recently at a particular point in the history of the Western world, although its precursors and underpinnings date back to ancient times. One of the most important characteristics of the concept is its hybrid character that cuts across time-honoured dualisms such as the one between theory and practice. What Foucault aims to analyse is not the real practice of government. In other words, it is not an empirical policy analysis. Governmentalities are reected practices. They amount to the self-consciousness of governing32 as Foucault puts it only half-jokingly. Along the lines of earlier inquiries, Foucault is interested in the way that political government can actually emerge as an (autonomous) object of reection. Thus, Foucault describes the freedom of Liberalism as being both ideology and technique of government33 and, more generally, states:
One is not assessing things in terms of an absolute against which they [practices] could be evaluated as constituting more or less perfect forms of rationality, but rather examining how forms of rationality inscribe themselves in practices or systems of practices, and what role they play within them, because it is true that practices do not exist without a certain regime of rationality.34
and one may add that, conversely, knowledge is always already inserted into practices. Supposedly, it is therefore neither an empirical analysis of the observable practices of government, nor is it just an intellectual history of governmental reection or analysis of the gap between reection and practice that Foucault is trying to provide. Thomas Lemke has argued that Foucault sees rationalities as part of a reality that is characterised
30) 31)
Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 89. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 116. 32) M. Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II. Die Geburt der Biopolitik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2004), 14. All translations from German are mine. 33) Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 78. 34) Foucault, Power, 229.
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by the permanent failure of programs.35 It is these reected practices of governing that Foucault wants to employ as a heuristic tool to approach and analyse the state, invoking the analogy to his disciplinary framework:
Is there an encompassing point of view with regard to the state, as there was with regard to local and denite institutions? [. . .] Can we talk of something like a Governmentality, that would be to the state what the techniques of segregation were for psychiatry, what techniques of discipline were to the penal system, and what biopolitics was to the medical institutions?36
The methodological punch line to the governmentality project then consists in an emphasis on practices as a starting point. Foucault states explicitly that he wants to set aside the conventional conceptual vocabulary employed in the analysis of the state such as sovereignty, people, civil society, and, most importantly, the state itself. Instead he wants to investigate how these universals37 are constituted and reconstituted through the concrete governing practices and the accompanying forms of reection. Instead of treating the state (and other concepts) as an unproblematic given that can serve as the explanans in an analysis, Foucault treats the state as a composite reality,38 the coherence and homogeneity of which do not exist by nature but have to be produced and reproduced with boundaries that are shifting and varying modi operandi that are unstable. It is Foucaults most fundamental claim, that these dynamics, the states survival and its boundaries, are intelligible only through the lens of the tactics of governmentality,39 or, as he puts it echoing a Nietzschean formulation: The state is [. . .] no soulless monster but the correlate of a particular way of governing.40 Accordingly, Foucault attempts to develop an approach to the state that is decidedly anti-essentialist. It is, furthermore, steeped in history and situates the state in the context of other institutions and discourses as well as more or less corresponding identities.41
35) T. Lemke, Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique, Rethinking Marxism, 14 (2002), 964. 36) Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 118, 120. 37) Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 15. 38) Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 109. 39) Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 109. 40) Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 19. 41) For a more detailed account of Foucaults analytics of state in the context of other theo-
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With this brief summary of the concept in mind we can now turn to the substantive contents of the history of governmentality. Although my critical claims are not concerned with the contents per se, an overview of the historical narrative will make the historiographical analysis more comprehensible. Having spent the rst couple of lectures distinguishing between dierent types or modes of power (sovereignty, discipline and security) in the context of occasional historical references, the chronological starting point of the history of governmentality is only reached in the fth lecture on February 8th 1978. Here Foucault introduces the term pastoral power42 that he traces back to the beginnings of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. This form of power that captures the meaning of government through the metaphor of shepherd and ock is notably absent from the Greek tradition43 and initially encompasses the way in which the monotheistic God governs the world and, analogously, the way the spiritual shepherd governs the souls of his ock. Foucault emphasizes both the fact that this form of government has people and their souls as an object in contrast to a territory and that it yields a twofold eect: It is both individualizing and totalising,44 or, to use the Latin expression Foucault refers to occasionally, the shepherd is responsible for each and everyone, omnes et singulatim. The theme of a shepherds responsibility for the (spiritual) salvation of the members of his ock and the respective forms of individualizing and totalising power/knowledge provide the underpinning of, or, prelude45 to governmentality proper, as it unfolds in the 16th Century. Foucault argues that the 16th Century witnesses both a crisis of pastoral power as well as its extension/transformation in the context of an intensied and broad search for forms of conduct of conduct. The upshot of this is twofold. The promise of spiritual salvation over time is transposed into a secularised responsibility for the welfare of the ock and, more immediately, politics and the state increasingly come to be seen as specic entities endowed with a reality of their own. This latter development starts with
ries of the state see T. Biebricher, Governmentality and State Theory (unpublished paper presented at the WPSA Conference 2007 in Las Vegas). 42) Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 123. 43) Foucault, Power, 2013. 44) Foucault, Power, 225. 45) Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 184.
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the heresies of Machiavelli, who takes a rst step towards the autonomisation of the state and political government. In Foucaults view Machiavellis interlocutor is not only Cicero, more importantly it is Aquinas who provides the most recent conceptualisation of political government in analogy to the way God governs the world and, echoing Aristotle, the patriarch governs the family.46 Machiavelli and those who will later argue against his specic approach to politics, are not concerned with nature and its laws in general they are concerned with what the state is.47 For the rst time in history the political state is no longer seen as either a part of a cosmological continuum or as an extension of ethical doctrines the political emerges as an autonomous sphere with its own specic exigencies. According to Foucault, Machiavelli himself deserves credit for this rupture of the various continuums, however, it is only the plethora of his critical interlocutors who will aspire to formulate a new art of government48 that overcomes Machiavellis focus on the monarch and contains a shift towards the notion of state sovereignty understood independently of the prince as a person, while agreeing with Machiavelli on the distinct nature of the political sphere. Still, the family of these governmentalities that Foucault subsumes under the label of Reason of State initially remain within the gravitational eld of Machiavelli to the extent that their historically rst concrete manifestation, Mercantilism, underscores the centrality of the sovereign: The objective of Mercantilism is the might of the sovereign.49 This rst concrete eort of a Reason of State governmentality is epitomized by the police state that goes together with a growing administrative apparatus that not only implements laws and decrees but, equally as important, generates necessary knowledge about the state and, increasingly, the regularities of the population. If the state is that which is to be maintained under all circumstances, even if it means breaking the law in a state of emergency, then it is essential to gather knowledge that is instrumental in capturing and assessing the powers of the state, what is needed to maintain and further them, and what is detrimental and therefore needs to be prevented. Thus, the governmentality of Reason of State triggers the birth of statistics, the task of which is to generate such knowledge.
46) 47) 48) 49)
Foucault, Power, 315. Foucault, Power, 315. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 88. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 102.
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Foucault characterizes the fully developed police state as twofold. According to the assumptions of Reason of State the outward dimension of a state conceptualised as a realm of unceasing competition between a multiplicity of states in contrast to the late Medieval notion of an Empire that would over time incorporate rivalling principalities under the banner of a unied Christendom. The intrinsic volatility of foreign relations can only be temporarily stabilized in a fragile balance of power between individual states and/or alliances along the lines of the Realist tradition in International Relations theory.50 Thus, while the state by necessity is limited in its external reach and the power it can project beyond its borders, the opposite is true with regard to its internal relations, in which the depth and breadth of interventions (preventative and punitive) by the police is in principle unlimited. Only through the workings of this police state, which is characterised by discretionary and disciplinary micro-management51 of nothing less than everything that concerns the state and what does not? does a new entity come into discursive existence that is pivotal to the further development and transformation of governing rationalities. This entity is the population and through its discovery52 a landmark shift in the history of governmentality is brought about. Having to concern itself with the subjects of a state in their actions and interactions, the police over time accumulates knowledge about regularities, causal mechanisms etc. on the level of what will be called the population. This vast and expanding knowledge will enable the transition to a liberal governnmentality, the way being paved by the doctrines of the Physiocrats of the 18th Century, who formulate the rst internal critique of the police state. The key to their understanding of how to govern is simple and at the same time fundamental: Things are not exible [les choses ne sont exibles].53 What this captures is the assumption that, analogous to the state and politics becoming a distinct reality in Machiavelli, society/the population exhibit what Foucault will refer to as a distinct naturality that cannot be indenitely shaped, overhauled and/or manipulated
Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 285310. One lives in a world of decrees, a world of discipline. Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 489. 52) For a critical discussion of this discovery see B. Curtis, Foucault on Governmentality and Population: The Impossible Discovery, Canadian Journal of Sociology, 27 (2002), 505533. 53) Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 344.
51) 50)
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through government. The conclusion that the Physiocrats draw still falls short of the more radical transformation reason of state governmentality undergoes under Liberalism. Quesnay and his followers call for an economic sovereign who aims at a maximum of knowledge about the economically relevant processes within society (the famous ordre naturel ), assuming that the economic sphere is transparent in principle.54 This claim will later be disputed by liberal thinkers. However, what both Physiocrats and Liberals will agree on is a more laissez-faire approach to the government of the economy, the specics being, of course, slightly dierent. Quesnays economic sovereign grants economic freedom since a potentially dangerous contingency resulting from this freedom is always already circumscribed and reined in by the sovereigns exhaustive knowledge about the aggregate ebbs and ows of the economy. For liberal thinkers, it is the very inability of the sovereign to pierce through the opacity of the economic sphere as a whole, that mandates a shift towards the actions of individual economic agents as a governing technique. Liberalism, in Foucaults governmentality-centred view, plays the role of an internal limitation of domestic government. Earlier governmentalities had been subjected to a limiting critique before, most notably through theories of public and natural law, that called for certain constraints with regard to the scope of government. However, Liberalism is not an external critical standard to determine whether a government abuses its power and/ or disrespects divine law. Its thought revolves around the question, how to make sure that there is not too much governing. The reason, however, is not because it would be normatively wrong but because it would be pragmatically unwise and inecient.55 The intellectual device used to resolve the question is the budding discipline of Political Economy with its respective theories about exchange, markets and interests. For the early liberal theorists, most notably Adam Ferguson, civil society, which Foucault views as a correlate of liberal governmentality exhibits a similar kind of naturality that was claimed for the political and economic realm by other theorists (see above); and thus its government ought to obey a similar maxim formulated by Walpole: Quieta non movere (What stands still shall not be moved). They argue that civil society is a self-sustaining sphere that displays the famous spontaneous order arising out of decentralized decisions
54) 55)
See Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 391. See Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 29.
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and not necessarily through deliberate design. Government only disturbs this mutually benecial order if it tries to intervene through decrees etc., at the most, it is the interest of individual agents that may be subject of careful manipulation in the context of liberal government.56 The question, whether there is a natural aspect to both this societal order and the freedom of individuals will be a matter of major contention in the further history of Liberalism. To the extent that the response to it is negative, it signals the transition from Liberalism to Neoliberalism, which is analysed in its ordo-liberal version developed by the German Freiburg School as well as the American version developed at the University of Chicago in lectures four to ten in the Birth of Biopolitics. Since the following section will make extensive reference to Foucaults analysis of Neoliberalism, I will restrict myself to a concise summary of the basics of his interpretation. As hinted above, one of the two key transformations that Foucault attributes to Neoliberalism concerns the self-sustaining nature of a free economic society. In contrast to the claims of Liberalism Freiburg School theorists such as Eucken and Mller-Armack emphasize the articial character of such a society, that is only maintained through constant intervention turning Neoliberalism almost into the opposite of LaissezFaire Economics in this regard. What matters to the Freiburg School is not the question of whether or not to intervene, but rather what the mode of economic intervention ought to be. It is their contention that only the framework of the economic realm [Rahmen] can and must be constantly manipulated to produce and reproduce a market society , while direct intervention particularly through a central state sets the society on a path towards creeping fascism as seen in the economic history of Germany from the 1870s to the 1930s. Similarly, freedom is not a natural condition of economic agents and therefore, Neoliberalism amounts to the organisation of conditions that enable one to be free57 an idea that Foucault took to be of fundamental importance for an analysis of the way we are being governed. The second novelty of the model of a Soziale Marktwirtschaft developed in the aftermath of World War II is premised upon its specic historical context. Given the necessity to rebuild a German state from scratch, Foucault claims that Neoliberalism no longer attempts to delineate a sphere that ought to be protected from the intrusions of a
56) 57)
See Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 406. See Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 98.
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state in potentially limitless entropy. Instead, it is now a state under the auspices of the market, and not the other way around.58 The post-war German state is considered to derive its very legitimation from its ability to function in accordance and in furtherance of the market. Schematically speaking, it no longer commands any primacy vis--vis the market. The shift from an attempt to constrain an entropy of the state to an entropy of the economy, or, to be more precise, economic rationalities, is also on display in the Chigago Neoliberalism, where theories of Human Capital developed by Gary Becker and others try to broaden the scope of economic analysis not only to encompass political government but also family relations or crime. The individual here comes to be conceptualised as entrepreneur of herself, or, Homo Oeconomicus, capable of a rational ordering of preferences and the ability to pursue behavioural strategies deemed most promising to maximize or at least satisce the expected utility. On the basis of this descriptive sketch of the history of governmentality we can now attempt to analyze the grammar of this history. As mentioned above, for heuristic purposes, I will preface my criticisms with a counterfactually genealogical history of governmentality. If the latter were a genealogy it would have to emphasize the discontinuous and contingent processes that are associated with the various shifts in governmentalities that Foucault describes. In other words, these dynamics must not be intelligible a priori and conversely, the history of governmentality must not be reduced to the ante-history of the present as the positive or negative culmination point of history. Closely related to this is the genealogical requirement explicated by Dean not to treat governmentalities as instantiations of ideal types. Instead, their historical specicity has to be emphasized. Furthermore, the processes associated with the dynamics of governmentality would have to be described with reference to societal struggles, the unpredictable logic of which would gure prominently in accounting for the contingency of those processes. Finally, the history of govnermentality would have to be presented in a style that is reminiscent of the textual strategies of Discipline and Punish etc. One would expect daring and provocative juxtapositions, hyperbole and an idiosyncratic exposition of the historical material that challenges and discomforts the reader, prompting her to reassess herself and the political world around her
58)
See Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 168.
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in the light of Foucaults hypothetical historicisations.59 Let me address these points in reverse order, starting with the question of style. While questions of style are very much open to interpretation, the differences in style between Discipline and Punish and the history of governmentality are nothing less than striking. The latter seems to foreshadow the even more dense, detached and dry style of the nal two volumes of the History of Sexuality,60 which are the only books by Foucault published after The Will to Knowledge. Obviously, a caveat is required at this point. The history of governmentality is a collection of lectures, which is a dierent genre from a book proper, arguably directed at a dierent audience with dierent purposes in mind. Thus, one would probably expect this dierence to have an impact on the style employed and it might be argued that the fact that the style is dierent in itself does not make a strong case for a departure from the substantive tenets of genealogy. Only if there existed a book on governmentality that lacked a particular style would this argument hold any water. Still, it is important to keep in mind that Foucault gave public lectures that did in fact resemble the style of Discipline and Punish in the daring hypotheses developed and the urgent and somewhat unsettling tone in which they were conveyed to the audience. The Order of Discourse is probably the strongest case in point in this regard. But while they also take place in the medium of the spoken word, the governmentality lectures might be said to serve a very dierent purpose that supposedly leaves a mark on their style as well. Here, Foucault reports to his students on the weekly progress of his thought process and accordingly these lectures have a more searching and preliminary character, which is underscored repeatedly by himself. However, taking a look at some of the other lecture classes Foucault held at the Collge de France, it becomes clear that the somewhat academic style of the governmentality lectures cannot be attributed exclusively to the specicities of the medium. Abnormal and even more so Society Must Be Defended display some remarkable similarities to the genealogical style in Discipline and Punish. Furthermore, to the extent that part of the genealogical style is a provocative rearrangement of the historic material which,
Saar, Genealogie als Kritik, 159. See Foucaults symptomatic motto at the very beginning of the lecture class: . . . I will therefore propose only one imperative, but it will be categorical and unconditional: Never engage in polemics. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 4.
60) 59)
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in conjunction with highly idiosyncratic interpretations of canonical thinkers leads to the hypothetical assertion of novel historical trajectories, Society Must Be Defended can arguably pass that test while the governmentality lectures are at best borderline cases. In the former, Foucault oers what could be seen as a genealogy of genealogical thought and this unusual angle leads him to intriguing interpretations of Hobbes, Machiavelli and the obscure aristocratic historian Boulainvilliers among others. Foucault is led to apodictic and provocative claims about Nietzsches Hypothesis concerning incessant struggles as the substrate of society and nally manages to connect this social ontology with both the Bio-Politics of Nazism as well as the Stalinist form of state terrorism directed against the class enemy. The restrictions of space do not permit me to back up this impressionist synopsis with an extensive textual analysis, but from what has been mentioned here it should be clear that these lectures at least are promising candidates for being considered genealogical in style and composition. Thus, the medium in itself cannot account for the rather un-genealogical style of the governmentality lectures, the storyline of which is also hardly as unusual as the one in Society Must Be Defended. The fact that there are some unconventional elements to be found in it such as the notion of Pastoral Power notwithstanding, a history of governing practices that span from Reason of State, Mercantilism and the Physiocratic doctrines to Liberalism and two versions of contemporary Neoliberalism does not necessarily appear as too counter-intuitive. One might still argue that the history of governmentality is a case of creative writing of history,61 but if genealogy cannot be detached from specic formal and textual strategies62 then the governmentality lectures can hardly be labelled genealogical in this respect. As a matter of fact, below I will return to the question of textual strategies briey to show that the specic rhetoric Foucault uses in these lectures sometimes leads to eects that go strongly against the genealogical grain. To what extent then is the history of governmentality also a history of societal struggles. According to the core genealogical tenets, reference to these struggles would have to gure prominently in this narrative. While, again, this can be conrmed with regard to Society Must Be Defended, matters are far more ambiguous in the case of the governmentality lectures. When Foucault discusses how the writing of a history of governmentality
61) 62)
Saar, Genealogie als Kritik, 232. Saar, Genealogie als Kritik, 16.
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would have to proceed it seems that the play of overpowering and resistance has to inhabit a crucial place. As mentioned above, Foucault conceives of the reected practices of governing as constantly failing programs. One of the main reasons why they are realised incompletely and then become subject to appropriation from various actors to the eect of a signicant change of the original direction in their overall thrust lies in that play of power and resistance.63 After all, the state is not monolithic but inhabited by a multitude of (para-) state actors with diering interests, using dierent systems of rationality as frames of reference and having varying power resources (Korpi) at their disposal. Moreover, the institutionalisation of governing practices confronts the obstacle of more or less compliant individual and collective actors outside the state. Thus, there should be ample room for the conceptual link between the dynamic of governmentalities and the struggles between these various actors to be eshed out empirically in the history of governmentality. However, the more Foucault leaves the programmatic level of what a history of governmentality would have to take into account and actually lays out this history, the more these struggles vanish from view. To be sure, the theme is not entirely absent from the lectures: Foucault spends some time discussing what he calls revolts of conduct in response to certain aspects of the pastorate.64 However, this is virtually the only time that forms of counter-conduct are addressed at greater length and even here the analysis remains vague to the extent that it is unclear how these revolts aect the dynamic of governmentalities or pastoral power for that matter. So, while Foucault keeps insisting that the point of view of pastoral power, of this analysis of structures of power, enables us, I think, to take up these things and analyze them, no longer in the form of reection and transcription, but in the form of strategies and tactics,65 this postulate is rarely adhered to in the course of the governmentality lectures.66 As I will try to show momentarily, the relative absence of this dimension of genealogy also feeds into the considerable departure of the governmentality framework from the nal core tenet of genealogy, i.e. the radical contingency of
Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 1178. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 194216. 65) Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 216. 66) For some reference to societal struggles and tactics see Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 118120, 148.
64) 63)
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historical processes that requires a decidedly anti-presentist stance in the writing of such a history. If it is true that Foucault does not rely on a connection between governmental dynamic and societal struggles then the question remains how the shift in governmentalities over time can be accounted for.67 Is this a process full of ruptures, displacements or contingencies as a genealogical approach would suggest? In my view, the history of governmentality presents us with a far more continuous picture that even verges on an historical process, in which an inherent telos can be watched unfolding over time. Being aware that this is a rather strong claim, I will nevertheless have to restrict myself to a limited number of textual examples and some arguments to illustrate it.68 As will be remembered, Foucault views the new arts of governing of the 16th Century as attempts to break with both the cosmological views of Aquinas as well as Machiavellis focus on the person of the sovereign. Thus, the task of the Reason of State governmentality that appears in this context is to nd the best way to govern in order to maintain the state. The ensuing history of governmentality can be seen as a process of trial and error to achieve this goal culminating in the (neo-) liberal governmentalities. Mercantilism manifests a rst attempt but it is still too focused on the personal power of the sovereign. The Police State that comes to accompany the reason of state governmentalities still assumes that society and economy can be micro-managed like a household. Similarly, the Physiocrats, while endorsing laissez-faire policies to some extent, still credit the sovereign with an ability to oversee the aggregate ows within the economy. It is only with the transition to Liberalism and Neoliberalism that the reected practices of governing accomplish to move beyond the household as a blueprint of governing (through) the economy by accepting the very opacity of the latter and the resulting limitations of direct governmental intervention that requires a shift of governance from the state to the free individuals themselves. Is this a history of contingent ruptures mediated through
67) This touches on a complex question present throughout the various phases of Foucaults oeuvre, namely whether and to what extent it is possible to make causal claims about historical events and developments. In other words, what does it mean to account for something? I will return to this issue below. 68) For an excellent and more detailed textual analysis that I build on in my argument see D. Dupont / F. Pearce, Foucault contra Foucault: Rereading the Governmentality Papers, Theoretical Criminology, 5 (2001), 123158.
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struggles? It seems to me that this history could alternatively be read in a rather teleological fashion. The initial governmentalities still mistake their task and misread the means to achieve it but over time come to approximate the ideal of a specic model of political governance more and more, with Neoliberalism being the crowning achievement. The dynamics, then, are rst and foremost accounted for internally in the sense that subsequent governmentalities learn from their predecessors and thus move step by step towards the most ecient way of governing. The physiocrats learn from the shortcomings of the Mercantilists to conceptualise the economy in a more dynamic manner and the transition from the ever more encroaching and exceedingly inecient micro-management of the Police State to the hands-o approach of Liberalism is reminiscent of the pendulum of dialectics where negation succeeds the negation. In sum, the history of governmentality at times verges on a teleological history in which the earliest beginnings of the budding new arts of government already point towards their own implicit end goal, i.e. contemporary Neoliberalism, in which they nally come to full fruition. Let me present a couple of arguments to support this anti-genealogical reading of the history of governmentality. First of all, there is the textual evidence that is closely interwoven with the question of style. Foucault tends to turn governmentalities into actors that behave in certain ways and at times seem to want to realize their own implicit telos. Consider the following passages referring to the arts of government that provide an excellent example in my view:
. . . the art of government was caught between an excessively large, abstract, and rigid framework of sovereignty on the one hand, and, on the other, a model of the family that was too narrow, weak and insubstantial. [. . .] and by the same token it was blocked by this idea of economy [. . .] With the household and father on the one hand, and the state and sovereignty on the other, the art of government could not nd its own dimension.69
This rhetoric suggests that governmentality pursues the telos of nding its own dimension while being blocked by erroneous self-conceptions, namely the notion of sovereignty and the household. As it happens, both of these blockades are nally overcome under Neoliberalism and the
69)
Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 103 (my emphasis).
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accompanying governmentalisation of the state.70 Moreover, Foucault discusses the Reason of State governmentality in the following way: I think raison dEtat really did dene an art of government in which there was implicit reference to the population, but precisely population had not yet entered into the reexive prism.71 Thus, the succeeding Police State will explicate what is already implicit in Reason of State, i.e. the notion of a population. There are two additional factors that lend indirect support to this somewhat unsympathetic interpretation of the history of governmentality, both of which have been mentioned before. First of all, it is, of course, the already discussed absence of an empirical linking between governmental dynamics and societal struggles that feeds into the impression of those dynamics amounting to an internal unfolding process that takes place in a social vacuum. The other factor is Foucaults reluctance to conceptualise any of the governmental shifts in terms of causal relations. While Foucault is right to be suspicious of simplistic models of historical causes and eects, his theoretical asceticism will only allow him to talk about polygonal constellations that can be made intelligible not explained through a method he refers to as eventalisation. This way of lightening the weight of causality72 reinforces the impression of free-oating governing rationalities, the link of which to other societal processes remains vague if not obscure. In the absence of such links the alternative storyline of an internal process gains ground almost by default. What all of this amounts to, is a historiography that is a far cry from the anti-presentist commitments of genealogy. In fact, the Neo-Liberal present and the accompanying radical governmentalisation of the state can be seen as the vanishing point of the history of governmentality that is present from the beginning, if only implicitly. After all, this presentism is even perceivable in the very denition of governmentality or at least one of the three that Foucault puts forward: Finally, by governmentality I think we should understand the process, or rather, the result of the process by which the state of justice of the Middle Ages became the administrative state in the fteenth and sixteenth centuries and was gradually govern-
70) 71) 72)
Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 109. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 278. Foucault, Power, 227; see also Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 57.
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mentalized .73 Given Foucaults elaboration in the same lecture that what is important for our modernity, that is to say for our present, is [. . .] what I would call the governmentalization of the state,74 it is hard to avoid the impression that the end of the history of governmentality is reached, or at least, is within close reach. It is this narcissism of the present that genealogy wanted to counter in treating the present as a time like any other, or rather, a time which is never quite like any other.75 As will be remembered, Deans emphasis on the anti-presentism of genealogy was closely linked to a refusal of historical reasoning based on ideal-types. However, even in this last regard, governmentalitys adherence to genealogical precepts is questionable. Consider Foucaults conceptualisation of the relation between pastoral power and political power:
First of all, between the pastoral power of the Church and political power there will, of course, be a series of conjunctions, supports, relays, and conicts, on which I will not dwell because they are well known, such that the intertwining of pastoral and political power will in fact be a historical reality throughout the West. However, the fundamental point is that despite these conjunctions, this intertwining, and the supports and relays, I think pastoral power, its form, type of functioning, and internal technology, remains absolutely specic and dierent from political power, at least until the eighteenth century.76
I take this to mean that in historical reality the two types of power were always intertwined in some way but Foucault insists that there is a certain specicity to pastoral power, which eectively turns the latter concept into an ideal type. My nal point ties the various issues discussed here together. Consider how Foucault describes the relation between Reason of State on the one hand and the new arts of government and Liberalism on the other: . . . after one has gained a good understanding regarding the functioning of Liberalism, which is opposed to Reason of State, or rather, fundamentally modies it, without necessarily questioning its foundations . . .77 In other words, Liberalism can be seen as a modication of Reason of State. Foucault,
73) 74) 75) 76) 77)
Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 1089. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 109. Foucault, Critical Theory/Intellectual History, 126. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 154 (my emphasis). Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 43.
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nally, suggests that the art of governing of the 18th Century be considered a doubling, or, rather, an internal dierentiation of Reason of State. It [the art of governing] is a principle of its [Reason of State] maintenance, its complete development, its perfection.78 In my view, these statements can be read in two ways that are not mutually exclusive. Reason of State, rst of all, could easily be considered an ideal type according to these and other formulations, with Mercantilism ,The New Arts of Government, Liberalism etc. being empirical manifestations that more and more come to approximate the ideal type, which, as such, never existed.79 Alternatively, the second quote in particular suggests that more recent governmentalities complete the telos inherent in earlier ones to the eect that even the new arts of government of the 18th Century, which Foucault takes to provide the template of contemporary (Neo-) Liberal governmentality are a perfection of Reason of State. Echoing the famous formulation of Clausewitz that Foucault also found so intriguing, one could say that Neoliberalism is the extension of Reason of State with other means. Given these more or less considerable departures of the history of governmentality from genealogy, the nal task of this paper is to assess the impact of these departures on the contemporary application of the framework in the Governmentality Studies.
3. Governmentality in the Governmentality Studies The eld of Governmentality Studies is inhabited by a diverse group of scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds, many of which would probably express uneasiness about being subsumed under that label.80 The many dierent ways in which the concept of governmentality is used and the varying contexts to which it is applied makes for an intellectual movement that is characterised by high degree of heterogeneity. While commentators have argued over the assessment of this heterogeneity, i.e. whether it stands for a healthy and vibrant inter- or even post-disciplinary
78) 79)
See Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 50 (my emphasis). In fact, Foucault calls Mercantilism explicitly the the rst eort to realize the new art of government on the level of political practices. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 102. 80) Dean, Governmentality, 4.
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pluralism or rather a conglomerate of disparate studies that are only united in the lip-service being paid to Foucaults ideas, which end up being trivialised and distorted,81 what concerns me in this chapter are problematic commonalities that pertain to many of these otherwise heterogeneous studies. In his seminal critical overview of the Governmentality Studies82 Thomas Lemke has argued persuasively that throughout the eld there is a strong tendency towards what could be called a reication of governmentality that has problematic theoretical as well as political ramications. To be more precise, governmentality is turned into a monolithic phenomenon, in which the practices of political government t with corresponding practices of individual self-government like hand in glove and go virtually unchallenged by alternative practices. The triumph of Neoliberalism in the singular is asserted and given the subtlety of its governing technology that works through the very freedom of individuals it is almost inconceivable how this regime could be challenged and why anyone would want to challenge it in the rst place. Admittedly, these criticisms arguably could be dodged with reference to rhetorical strategies that work similarly to the ones found in Foucaults genealogical writings. However, while Discipline and Punish conveys a sense of claustrophobic captivity, works in the Governmentality Studies often depict Neo-Liberal governing technologies as smooth as the cloak that the Protestant work ethic was for the Puritans according to Weber. This hardly seems conducive to inspiring any desire for oppositional action. In my view, then, a more productive use of the governmentality framework would have to introduce a stronger measure of heterogeneity. That is to say that the inherent tensions within a given governmentality have to be highlighted more strongly and/or society as a whole has to be conceived of as the site of multiple governmentalities that exist simultaneously although this does not necessarily exclude the possibility of describing this multiplicity in terms of hegemonic constellations. As an example one could point to the focus on a responsibilisation of individuals, which
G. Kendall / G. Wickham, Problems with the Critical Posture? Foucault and Critical Discourse Analysis (unpublished Paper presented at the Social Change in the 21st Century Conference 2006 at the Queensland University of Technology). 82) T. Lemke, Neoliberalismus, Staat und Selbsttechnologien. Ein kritischer berblick ber die governmentality studies, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 41 (2000), 3147.
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involves their interpellation as a rational homo oeconomicus carefully planning their individual retirement scheme and investing smartly into their specic skill sets. While there is no doubt that this captures an aspect of contemporary life that is of profound importance, it marginalizes other aspects of contemporary identities that are arguably of equal signicance. Thus, while there may be a responsibilisation taking place, simultaneously we have been witnessing an irresponsibilisation of individuals as consumers and borrowers that is part and parcel of contemporary capitalism. Benjamin Barber has recently referred to an ethos of infantility that encourages libidinal desires of instant gratication through consumption and leaves a staggering number of households in personal debt.83 Recently, this has become exacerbated by the subprime-mortgage crisis, which is in part explained by the systematic encouragement of highly irresponsible behaviour of (future) home-owners with regard to mortgages and loans. These tensions within what may be called contemporary Neoliberalism require more emphasis, not the least because these fault lines and the resulting instability suggest the continued presence of transformative potentials. A nal aspect of this call for more heterogeneity would be an exploration of varieties of Neoliberalism analogous to the Varieties of Capitalism (Hall/ Soskice), which would emphasize the dierences between the specic make-up of Neoliberalism in dierent national or regional contexts and thus contribute to a governmentality paradigm better equipped to capture and account for the important dierences that exist between Neoliberalism in the United States and France, for example.84 My point in raising these issues is that to some extent these aws are rooted in Foucaults own history of governmentality, although this claim is in need of specication. As has been shown, in principle, Foucaults view of governmentality as an endless number of failing programs that are appropriated for all kinds of purposes by a multiplicity of actors lends itself
B. Barber, Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole (New York: Horton & Company, 2007). 84) See Barry Hindess on this point, whose position remains somewhat ambiguous in stating that there are as many liberalisms as there are procedures for identifying contexts in which the governmental promotion of free interaction is to be preferred, but simultaneously insisting that this international neo-liberalism is the most powerful, and consequently also the most dangerous, liberalism of our time B. Hindess, Liberalism whats in a name in W. Larner / W. Walters (eds.), Global Governmentality. Governing international spaces (London/New York: Routledge, 2004), 2339, 36 (my emphasis).
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well to an emphasis on heterogeneity and openness.85 However, as I have argued in the preceding section the way that the project is carried out in the lectures does not necessarily adhere to these assumptions. Specically, the absence of a more pronounced reference to societal struggles and forms of resistance in accounting for governmental dynamics is highly conducive to the reied reading that governmentality oftentimes receives in the respective studies. My nal point is closely related to what has been argued so far and just transposes the themes of diversity and hetereogeneity from the synchronic to the diachronic dimension. In a recent paper Mark Bevir has posed the somewhat provocative question, what happens after Neo-Liberalism , or, in other words, whether we are still governed by a predominantly neoliberal governmentality.86 Concurring with Bevir on this point, I would argue that there is a tendency within the Governmentality Studies to be a little too content with an armative response taking its diagnostic clues from an assessment made by Foucault thirty years ago. Bevir argues instead that, at the very least, Neoliberalism has undergone considerable changes since the days of Margaret Thatcher, for example through a shift in emphasis away from the individual towards community under the Labor government of Tony Blair.87 Given a range of diverse phenomena from the consolidation and centralisation of power in the United States administration in pursuit of a unied executive, the growing disenchantment over Neoliberalism in Australia, one of its former strongholds, or the resurgence of matters of territory in the light of concerns over (illegal) immigration both in the United States and Europe, one might even wonder whether we have reached an era of post-Neo-Liberal governmentality. What is at stake here is not only the issue of dierent periodizations. Clinging too much to the
Furthermore, Foucaults distinction between various types of power that exist simultaneously as well as his explicit dierentiation between Freiburg- and Chicago-School Neoliberalism point into the direction of a more diversied understanding of contemporary governmentality. 86) M. Bevir, After NeoLiberalism? Institutionalism and the Third Way (unpublished paper presented at the WPSA Conference 2007 in Las Vegas). See also M. Bevir, New Labor: A Critique (London: Routledge, 2005). 87) Others point to a reorientation in neoliberal governance in response to various diculties involved in governing at arms length. See M. Flinders, Public/Private: The Boundaries of the State in Colin Hay et al. (eds.), The State. Theories and Issues (New York: Palgrave, 2006), 223247.
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established diagnosis of Neo- or Advanced Liberalism may bar important transformations from being recognized by scholars of governmentality. Obviously, such a theoretical lock-in implies highly problematic consequences for any political project aiming at change but also for a more nuanced and informed understanding of the present. Again, this excessive focus on Neoliberalism which characterises many works in the Governmentality Studies can be traced back to the presentist tendencies that can be located within Foucaults own history of governmentality. To the extent that Neoliberalism appears as an inherent telos in the latter, the former just follows in Foucaults own footsteps. In my view, it is imperative to move beyond the diagnoses oered by Foucault at the onset of what is arguably a period of hegemonic Neoliberalism and to question them on the basis of developments having taken place in the meantime. Just as Neo-Marxists have questioned, revised and elaborated on concrete historical diagnoses by Marx, governmentality scholars have to think beyond the connes of Foucaults own history of governmentality. This history has to be expanded not the least to stay true to the imperative that Foucault found to be at the core of the Enlightenment ethos animating his own studies as well, i.e. nding out what dierence does today introduce with respect to yesterday.88
Conclusion In this essay I have attempted to give an assessment of whether and to what extent the history of governmentality can be considered to be a genealogy. To this eect I have oered a generic account of core tenets of Foucauldian genealogy focusing on a radically contingent view of history that is expressed in a distinct style and highlights the impact of power on this history. I have used this account as a measuring device to be applied to the governmentality framework. While the concept of governmentality and also its history retain certain links to genealogical precepts, my overall conclusion is that particularly the history of governmentality (and not necessarily Foucaults more programmatic statements about it) departs from
M. Foucault, What is Enlightenment in P. Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 3250, 34.
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these precepts in signicant ways. Not only is there a notable dierence in style that cannot be accounted for entirely by the fact that this history is produced in the medium of lectures. Aside from a rather abstract consideration of the importance of societal struggles, revolts and other forms of resistance, there is also little reference to the role of these phenomena in the concrete dynamics of governmental shifts that are depicted in the historical narrative. Finally, in contrast to the historical contingency espoused by genealogy and the programmatic statements about governmentality, the actual history of the latter can be plausibly, albeit unsympathetically, read in a rather teleological fashion according to which the transformations of governmentality amount to the unfolding of an initially implicit notion of governing that is subsequently realised in ever more consistent ways. Let me close with some thoughts regarding what is at stake in my attempt to pitch genealogy against the history of governmentality. First of all, it is important to note that, while emphasising the ways in which the two approaches are incongruent I do not mean to imply that they are incommensurate and have to be assessed entirely on their own terms. The view of a radically fragmented oeuvre is often espoused by commentators because it is believed to apply the lessons from Foucaults own reservations about the author. Furthermore, it gives due weight to the intellectual dynamic which inarguably is on display in his thought. However, this perspective fails to consider the many continuities that do exist throughout the various phases of his work. The continuities between genealogy and governmentality pointed out by Saar, Dean, Lemke and others are a case in point. My point is not to deny those links but to place them in the context of arguably even more fundamental discontinuities between the frameworks. In contrasting them, my main aim is not to make a philological point about how to understand the dynamics pertaining to Foucaults oeuvre. Rather, this juxtaposition is used as a heuristic device to expose some shortcomings of the history of governmentality through what could be referred to as a semi-immanent critique of governmentality from a genealogical perspective. However, I would not want to derive a call for a genealogy of governmentality from this. As I mentioned in the beginning, beyond some core tenets, there is far too much controversy surrounding the contours of genealogy to make this a promising theoretical project quite apart from the fact that it is not clear what this would mean with reference to the
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question of style and other issues such as the changes in Foucaults view of power away from Nietzsches Hypothesis. Rather, this critique should be viewed as providing a contribution to the research agenda of contemporary scholars of governmentality. Two main points that the critique would suggest are, rst, the desirability of lling in the blanks of the history of governmentality regarding the link between governmental shifts and mechanisms of power and struggle. Of course, this is a complex task, not the least since it involves addressing the question of historical causality. Still, in my view, it could placate at least some of the concerns that the history of governmentality raises in this respect. Secondly, developing a more heterogeneous account of contemporary governmentalit(ies), both synchronic and diachronic, would address the teleological as well as the presentist aspects of Foucaults account. What both of these demands imply is that Foucaults characterisation of his own works as game openings89 ought to be taken seriously: they do not require emulation but a creative and possibly critical response to the initial move in order to keep the game going.
89)
Foucault, Power, 224.

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Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

Genealogy and Governmentality*

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, 361.

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

See Foucault, Geschichte der Gouvernementalitt II, 168.

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 103 (my emphasis).

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

70) 71) 72)

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

T. Biebricher / Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (2008) 363396

Foucault, Power, 224.

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