Thomas Lemke

'The birth of bio-politics': Michel Foucault's lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality

This paper focuses on Foucaults analysis of two forms of neo-liberalism in his lecture of 1979 at the Collège de France: German post-War liberalism and the liberalism of the Chicago School. Since the course is available only on audio-tapes at the Foucault archive in Paris, the larger part of the text presents a comprehensive reconstruction of the main line of argumentation, citing previously unpublished source material. The final section offers a short discussion of the methodological and theoretical principles underlying the concept of governmentality and the critical political angle it provides for an analysis of contemporary neo-liberalism.

Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique

“I often quote concepts, texts and phrases from Marx, but without feeling obliged to add the authenticating label of a footnote with a laudatory phrase to accompany the quotation. As long as one does that, one is regarded as someone who knows and reveres Marx, and will be suitably honoured in the so-called Marxist journals. But I quote Marx without saying so, without quotation marks, and because people are incapable of recognising Marx’s texts I am thought to be someone who doesn’t quote Marx. When a physicist writes a work of physics, does he feel it necessary to quote Newton and Einstein?” (Foucault 1980, p. 52).

New Materialisms: Foucault and the ‘Government of Things’

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 unresolved tensions in new materialist scholarship and allows for a more materialist account of politics.

Disposition and determinism – genetic diagnostics in risk society

This article investigates the relationship between genetic determinism and the discourse of risk by making use of an elaboration of the concept of governmentality developed by Michel Foucault. After a short outline of the theoretical profile of the employed risk analysis, the main part of the text distinguishes three core level of analysis. With a view to illustrating several aspects of a ‘genetic governmentality’ the increasing social impact of genetic information is examined from the angle of truth programs, power strategies and technologies of the self.

Critique and Experience in Foucault

It is widely known that by the end of the 1970s, Foucault had begun to refer to ‘experience’ to account for his intellectual trajectory and to redirect the work on The History of Sexuality. However, the interest in experience also decisively shaped Foucault’s analysis of the ‘critical attitude’ that he explicitly started to address at about the same time. The article argues that Foucault’s notion of critique is informed by a specific reading and understanding of ‘experience’. Experience is conceived of as dominant structure and transformative force, as existing background of practices and transcending event, as the object of theoretical inquiry and the objective of moving beyond historical limits. Foucault defines experience as a dynamic interplay between games of truth, forms of power and relations to the self. Accordingly, the Foucauldian account of critique is characterized by three aspects: the activity of problematization, the art of voluntary insubordination, and the audacity to expose one’s own status as a subject. While the first section of the article briefly reconstructs the trajectory of ‘experience’ in Foucault’s work from the 1960s to the 1980s, the main part discusses the dimensions and implications of this ‘experimental’ critique.

Max Weber, Norbert Elias und Michel Foucault über Macht und Subjektivierung

Innerhalb der deutschen Soziologie wurde die Arbeit Michel Foucaults bisher eher verhalten rezipiert. Immer wieder ist in der Auseinandersetzung mit seinen Texten auf zentrale theoretische Defizite und begriffliche Verengungen der Machtanalytik hingewiesen worden. Im Rahmen eines Theorievergleichs mit Max Webers Herrschaftssoziologie auf der einen und der Theorie der Zivilisation von Norbert Elias auf der anderen Seite sollen in diesem Beitrag die analytischen Stärken der „Genealogie der Macht“ herausgearbeitet werden. Dabei wird die These vertreten, dass sich schwer wiegende Probleme der beiden Theorieansätze durch den Rekurs auf das Foucaultsche Konzept der Gouvernementalität überwinden lassen. Die Problematik der Gouvernementalität erschließt — so die weiter gehende Annahme — der soziologischen Machtforschung eine Reihe innovativer Forschungsperspektiven und öffnet sie für neue Fragestellungen.SummarySo far, German sociology has hardly discussed the work of Michel Foucault. One reason for this neglect is, that his work is regarded as suffering theoretical flaws and conceptual problems — an interpretation, which is prominent in the discussion of Foucault’s „analytics of power“. This paper presents a rather different view. The comparison of Foucault’s conception of „governmentality“ with both, Weber’s sociology of domination and Elias’s theory of the process of civilization shows, how this idea allows to go well beyond certain limits of the two classical approaches. Moreover, the paper argues, that the conception of governmentality opens up new and important research perspectives as well as innovative theoretical questions to sociology.RésumésJusqu’à présent, la sociologie allemande s’est montrée réservée à l’égard des travaux de Michel Foucault. Se confronter à ses textes est toujours ramené à des déficits théoriques centraux et à des rétrécissements conceptuels de l’analytique du pouvoir. Dans le cadre d’une comparaison de théories, avec la sociologie de la domination de Max Weber d’un côté et la théorie de la civilisation de Norbert Elias de l’autre, cet article entend dégager les qualités analytiques de la „généalogie du pouvoir“. Parallèlement, il fait apparaitre que certains problèmes présents dans les deux théories trouvent leur solution dans le recours au concept de gouvernementalité de Foucault. La problématique de la gouvernementalité ouvre à la recherche sociologique sur le pouvoir un faisceau de perspectives de recherche novatrices et lui offre la possibilité de nouveaux questionnements.

From state biology to the government of life: Historical dimensions and contemporary perspectives of ‘biopolitics’

The notion of biopolitics has recently become a buzzword. However, there is no consensus about its empirical object or its normative implications. A further disagreement concerns the historical period to which the term refers. For some, biopolitics goes back to Antiquity, or even to the invention of agriculture, while others regard it as the result of contemporary biotechnological innovations. My point of departure in this article is the virtual polarization that is attached to the merger of life and politics in the notion of biopolitics. The existing concepts differ in respect of which part of the word they emphasize. It is possible to distinguish naturalistic concepts that take life as the basis of politics and to contrast these with politicist concepts which conceive of life processes as the object of politics. The two lines of interpretation will be analysed in the first part of the article. My central thesis is that both approaches fail to capture essential dimensions of biopolitical processes. Against the naturalist and the politicist reading I will propose a historical notion of biopolitics that was first developed by the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. The diverse refinements and corrections of the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics can be integrated into an ‘analytics of biopolitics’ that will be presented in the final part of the paper.

Comment on Nancy Fraser: Rereading Foucault in the Shadow of Globalization

Nancy Fraser’s interpretation of Foucault as theorist of fordist discipline is surprising for at least two reasons. First, Foucault clearly wrote not only about power and discipline, but also about different experiences, discourses, episteme, and technologies of the self – all central concepts at different points of his theoretical work. Moreover, his historical analyses concentrated on an era that came long before fordism: aside from his last works, Foucault’s investigations were confined to the period from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the thesis can of course be supported that fordism is a kind of inner reference point of Foucauldian theory. A number of examples and good arguments can be brought forth for this. Nancy Fraser has presented some of them. I do not wish to arouse the impression here of having at my disposal the one and only correct interpretation of Foucault, against which to juxtapose the one suggested by Fraser. This would in the end be a tedious endeavor. The question that interests me here is rather, which reading of Foucault opens up his ideas for the analysis of contemporary social and political transformations? Which theoretical instruments from his much-cited toolkit can still be used to explain present forms of domination and exploitation? In my view this is not a matter of a philological search for Foucault’s correct theory, but rather of a political critique or, in Foucault’s own words, of a “new politics of truth”. Here I come to the second point – or, better, the second reason – why Fraser’s characterization of Foucault as theorist of fordism surprised me. When we abandon the question

Suspect Families: DNA Kinship Testing in German Immigration Policy

Since the 1990s, many countries around the world have begun to use DNA testing to establish biological relatedness in family reunification cases. Family reunification refers to the right of family members living abroad to join relatives who hold long-term residence permits or are citizens of a given country. Using Germany as an exemplary case, the article explores different societal implications and consequences of parental testing for family reunification. Special attention is drawn to the implicit model of family and kinship that informs this immigration regime. We argue that DNA analyses for family reunification establish and strengthen a biological family model which is in contrast to the more pluralistic and social concepts of family in Germany and in many societies in Europe and North America. The argument is based on a document analysis and interviews with representatives of NGOs and immigration authorities, lawyers, geneticists, and applicants for family reunification.

Biological Citizenship Reconsidered The Use of DNA Analysis by Immigration Authorities in Germany

In recent years, there has been an intense debate about the concept of “biological” or “genetic citizenship.” The growing literature on this topic mostly refers to the importance of patients’ associations, disease advocacy organizations, and self-help groups that are giving rise to new forms of subjectivation and collective action. The focus is on the extension of rights, the emergence of new possibilities of participation, and the choice-enhancing options of the new genetics. However, this perspective tends to neglect the potential for exclusion and restriction of citizenship rights based on biological traits. We aim to broaden and complement the existing theoretical discussion on biological citizenship, which so far has concentrated on the medical sphere, by investigating a new empirical field. The article analyzes the use of DNA analysis for family reunification and shows that biological criteria still play an important role in decision making on citizenship rights in nation-states. Presenting Germany as an exemplary case, we argue that the use of parental testing endorses a biological concept of the family that is mobilized to diminish citizenship rights. The argument is based on documentary analysis and on interviews with representatives of nongovernmental organizations and immigration authorities, lawyers, geneticists, and applicants for family reunification.