Abstract

In this chapter, I retrace the emergence of the notion of governmentality in Michel Foucault’s work as both a way of prolonging his previous analyses of disciplinary and biopolitical power, and as a necessary condition for the development of his reflections on “ethics” and the techniques of the self. First, I show that the anatomo- and bio-political mechanisms of power that Foucault explores in the 1970s have a common goal: the government of human beings’ (everyday) life in its multiple, interconnected dimensions (Section 2). I then argue that Foucault elaborates the notion of governmentality as a response to the objection according to which his power/knowledge framework makes any attempt at resistance ultimately pointless. His genealogy of the government of human beings emphasizes that the point of articulation and clash between power and resistance is to be situated at the level of what he calls “subjectivity,” thus establishing a direct link between politics and ethics (Section 3). Indeed, defined as the contact point between coercion-technologies and self-technologies, subjectivity constitutes for Foucault both the main target of governmental mechanisms of power and the essential support for the enactment of counter-conducts and practices of freedom (Section 4). This, I argue, helps to explain the distinctively “anarchaeological” flair of Foucault’s lectures and writings post-1978: the study of governmentality goes hand in hand with the postulate of the non-necessity of all power, and hence with the ever-present possibility of critique and resistance. The political relevance of Foucault’s so-called “turn to ethics,” I claim, can only be understood in this light, since governmentality for him ultimately implies the relationship of self to self (Section 5).