An indigestible meal? Foucault, governmentality and state theory
01 Jan 2007-Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory (Taylor & Francis Group)-Vol. 8, Iss: 2, pp 43-64
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the contribution of an "analytics of government" to state theory, taking up methodological and theoretical considerations that Michel Foucault developed in his lectures at the College de France on the history of governmentality.
Abstract: This article explores the contribution of an ‘analytics of government’ to state theory. This approach takes up methodological and theoretical considerations that Michel Foucault developed in his lectures 0f1978 and 1979 at the College de France on the ‘history of “governmentality”’. The article argues that an analytics of government is characterized by three theoretical dimensions: a nominalist account that stresses the central importance of knowledge and political discourses in the constitution of the state; a broad concept of technology that encompasses not only material but also symbolic devices, including political technologies as well as technologies of the self; a strategic account that conceives of the state as an instrument and effect of political strategies. After presenting the three analytical dimensions, the last part of the article will compare this theoretical perspective with the concept of governance and with critical accounts of neo-liberalism. The article concludes that Foucault's work o...
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TL;DR: The authors argue that spatial planning in England needs to be analysed as a form of neoliberal spatial governance, underpinned by a variety of post-politics that has sought to replace antagonism and agonism with consensus.
Abstract: This paper argues that spatial planning in England needs to be analysed as a form of neoliberal spatial governance, underpinned by a variety of post-politics that has sought to replace antagonism and agonism with consensus. Conflict has not been removed from planning, but it is instead more carefully choreographed and in some cases displaced or otherwise residualised. This has been achieved through a variety of mechanisms including partnership-led governance arrangements and inclusive though vague objectives and nomenclature around sustainable growth. Other consequences include the emergence of soft space scales of planning often deploying fuzzy boundaries that blur more concrete policy implications and objectives. Opposition to this post-political form of planning has led to new avenues for dissent that challenge spatial planning and its consensual underpinnings, ironically paving the way for the radical ‘rollback’ planning reforms of the Coalition government.
362 citations
TL;DR: Barad as discussed by the authors explores the perspectives of Foucault's notion of government by linking it to the debate on the 'new materialism' and proposes a conceptual proposal of a 'government of things' which takes into account the interrelatedness and entanglement of men and things.
Abstract: The article explores the perspectives of Foucault’s notion of government by linking it to the debate on the ‘new materialism’. Discussing Karen Barad’s critical reading of Foucault’s work on the body and power, it points to the idea of a ‘government of things’, which Foucault only briefly outlines in his lectures on governmentality. By stressing the ‘intrication of men and things’ (Foucault), this theoretical project makes it possible to arrive at a relational account of agency and ontology, going beyond the anthropocentric limitations of Foucault’s work. This perspective also suggests an altered understanding of biopolitics. While Foucault’s earlier concept of biopolitics was limited to physical and biological existence, the idea of a ‘government of things’ takes into account the interrelatedness and entanglements of men and things, the natural and the artificial, the physical and the moral. Finally, the conceptual proposal of a ‘government of things’ helps to clarify theoretical ambiguities and unresolv...
230 citations
Cites background from "An indigestible meal? Foucault, gov..."
...See Lemke (2007) for a similar argument about the ‘genealogy of the modern state’....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the proliferation of soft spaces of governance, focusing on planning, and explore how soft space forms of governance operate as integral to processes of neoliberalisation, highlighting how such state forms facilitate neoliberalisation through their flexibility and variability.
Abstract: This paper examines the proliferation of soft spaces of governance, focusing on planning. We move beyond more functional explanations to explore the politics of soft spaces, more specifi cally how soft space forms of governance operate as integral to processes of neoliberalisation, highlighting how such state forms facilitate neoliberalisation through their fl exibility and variability. Recent state restructuring of the planning sector and emerging trends for soft spaces in England under the Coalition government proposals are discussed.
210 citations
TL;DR: The distinct French and Italian concepts of appareil/apparato and dispositif/dispositivo have frequently been rendered the same way as "apparatus" in English as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The distinct French and Italian concepts of appareil/apparato and dispositif/dispositivo have frequently been rendered the same way as "apparatus" in English. This presents a double problem since it collapses distinct conceptual lineages from the home languages and produces a false identity in English. While there are good reasons for which translators have chosen to use "apparatus" for dispositif , there is growing cause for evaluating the theoretical and empirical specificity of each concept, and either to rethink the rendering as "apparatus" or to keep in mind the specific philosophical trajectories of each one. In particular, the ongoing release of Michel Foucault’s College de France lecture courses (in which the term is frequently used), and the essays by Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben bearing directly on the dispositif and the dispositivo present a strong case for reevaluating the usage and rendering of these concepts. This paper presents a number of minute considerations on the productive distinction between them.
174 citations
TL;DR: Foucault's concept of governmentality goes beyond the narrow limits of state power to look at how these societies employ more subtle methods of power exercised through a network of institutions.
Abstract: Foucault’s concept of governmentality goes beyond the narrow limits of state power to look at how these societies employ more subtle methods of power exercised through a network of institutions, pr...
150 citations
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19,485 citations
01 Jan 1979
17,729 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present La Volonté de Savoir, the methodological introduction of a projected five-volume history of sexuality, which seems to have a special fascination for Foucault: the gradual emergence of medicine as an institution, the birth of political economy, demography and linguistics as human sciences, the invention of incarceration and confinement for the control of the "other" in society (the mad, the libertine, the criminal) and that special violence that lurks beneath the power to control discourse.
Abstract: This writer who has warned us of the “ideological” function of both the oeuvre and the author as unquestioned forms of discursive organization has gone quite far in constituting for both these “fictitious unities” the name (with all the problems of such a designation) Michel Foucault. One text under review, La Volonté de Savoir, is the methodological introduction of a projected five-volume history of sexuality. It will apparently circle back over that material which seems to have a special fascination for Foucault: the gradual emergence of medicine as an institution, the birth of political economy, demography and linguistics as “human sciences,” the invention of incarceration and confinement for the control of the “other” in society (the mad, the libertine, the criminal) and that special violence that lurks beneath the power to control discourse.
15,794 citations
Book•
18 Apr 2012
TL;DR: Foucault shows the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations, administrative and legal hierarchies for social control and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the Middle Ages there were gaols and dungeons, but punishment was for the most part a spectacle. The economic changes and growing popular dissent of the 18th century made necessary a more systematic control over the individual members of society, and this in effect meant a change from punishment, which chastised the body, to reform, which touched the soul. Foucault shows the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations, administrative and legal hierarchies for social control - and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole. He also reveals that between school, factories, barracks and hospitals all share a common organization, in which it is possible to control the use of an individual's time and space hour by hour.
11,379 citations