The recent debate about biopolitics in International Relations (IR) theory may well prove to be one of the most provocative and rewarding engagements with the concept of power in the history of the discipline. Building on Foucault's arguments concerning the role played by the concept of security in 19th-century liberal government, numerous IR scholars are now arguing for the relevance of his theories of biopolitics and governmentality for understanding the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and broader issues of security and governance in the post 9/11 world. Conversely, others have criticized this idea. Marxist and Communitarian scholars have challenged the notion that the category of biopolitics can be 'scaled' up to the level of international relations with any analytical precision. This edited volume covers these debates in IR with a series of critical engagements with Foucault's own thought and its increasing relevance for understanding international relations in the post 9/11 world. This book was based on a special issue of Global Society.
This book addresses the possibilities of analyzing the modern international through the thought of Michel Foucault. The broad range of authors brought together in this volume question four of the most self-evident characteristics of our contemporary world-'international', 'neoliberal', 'biopolitical' and 'global'- and thus fill significant gaps in both international and Foucault studies. The chapters discuss what a Foucauldian perspective does or does not offer for understanding international phenomena while also questioning many appropriations of Foucault's work. This transdisciplinary volume will serve as a reference for both scholars and students of international relations, international political sociology, international political economy, political theory/philosophy and critical theory more generally.
The study of global governance has often led separate lives within the respective camps of International Political Economy and Foucauldian Studies. Guzzini and Neumann combine these to look at an increasingly global politics with a growing number of agents, recognising the emergence of a global polity.
Foucault's challenging view of power and knowledge as the basis for interpreting the international system forms the central themes of this book. As the application of international law expands and develops this book considers how Foucault's approach may create a viable framework that is not beset by ontological issues. With International law essentially stuck within an older framework of outmoded statist approaches, and overly broad understanding of the significance of external actors such as international organizations; current interpretations are either rooted in a narrow attempt to demonstrate a functioning normative structure or interpret developments as reflective of some emerging and somewhat unwieldy ethical order. This book therefore aims to ameliorate the approaches of a number of different 'schools' within the disciplines of international law and international relations, without being wedded to a single concept. Current scholarship in international law tends to favour an unresolved critique, a utopian vision, or to refer to other disciplines like international relations without fully explaining the significance or importance of taking such a step. This book analyses a variety of problems and issues that have surfaced within the international system and provides a framework for consideration of these issues, with a view towards accounting for ongoing developments in the international arena.
Oriented around the theme of a ‘politics of philosophy’, this book tracks the phases in which Foucault’s genealogy of power, law, and subjectivity was reorganized during the 14 years of his teaching at the College de France, as his focus shifted from sovereignty to governance. This theme, Sandro Chignola argues here, is the key to understanding four features of Foucault’s work over this period. First, it foregrounds its immediate political character. Second, it demonstrates that Foucault’s "Greek trip" also aims at a politics of the subject that is able to face the processes of the governmentalization of power. Third, it makes clear that the idea of the "government of the self" is – drawing on an ethics of intellectual responsibility that is Weberian in origin – an answer to the processes that, within neoliberal governance, produce the subject as an individual (as a consumer, a market agent, an entrepreneur, and so on). Fourth, the theme of a ‘politics of philosophy’ implies that Foucault’s research was never simply scholarly or neutral; but rather was characterized by a specific political position. Against recent interpretations that risk turning Foucault into a scholar, here then Foucault is re-presented as a key figure for jurisprudential and political-philosophical research.
This book is the first to systematically reconstruct Foucault’s political and philosophical thought across his career, arguing that Foucault had a consistent but ever-growing political and philosophical viewpoint.
This text is an accessible but challenging introduction to the debate on "governmentality" and the continued relevance of this body of work for the study of global politics.
Originally published in 1999 this exceptionally clear and lucid book quickly became the standard overview of what are now called 'governmentality studies'. With its emphasis on the relationship between governmentality and other key concepts drawn from Michel Foucault, such as bio-politics and sovereignty, the first edition anticipated and defined the terms of contemporary debate and analysis. In this timely second edition Mitchell Dean engages with the full textual basis of Foucault's lectures and once again provides invaluable insights into the traditions, methods and theories of political power identifying the authoritarian as well as liberal sides of governmentality. Every chapter has been fully revised and updated to incorporate, and respond to, new theoretical, social and political developments in the field; a new introduction surveying the state of governmentality today has also been added as well as a completely new chapter on international governmentality.
Drawing on the writings of Foucault, this book explores the politics and power-dynamics of family life, examining how everyday obligations such as attending school, going to work and staying healthy are organized through the family. The book includes an essay by Foucault, Les désordres des familles , translated here in English for the first time.
In his preface to Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, Michel Foucault notes that in the late sixties, there is a turn away from Freud anda movement toward what he calls an “experience and technology of desire that is no longer Freudian”. Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari were interested in, and engaged with this shift and their collective work in these areas spawned a larger post-Freudian literature. This book gathers contributions from international scholars with the aim of exploring the social, political, and philosophical dimension of Deleuze and Guattari’s, and Foucault’s critical encounters with psychoanalytic thought: Their possible connections, their divergences, the fields of reflection that these encounters open, and the problems and debates that led Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari to engage with psychoanalysis in the ways that they did. In doing so, the main goal of the book is not to engage in a critique of the discipline of Psychoanalysis as such, but to investigate how Foucault’s and Deleuze’s critique of Psychoanalysis gives rise to a political reflection that draws on some of Psychoanalysis key notions. Among these, the concept of Desire is central as it allows us to grasp the different ways in which Foucault and Deleuze politically engage with Psychoanalysis: for Deleuze, Desire is the element through which Revolution becomes possible, whereas for Foucault Desire is a cornerstone of the modern mechanisms of subjection. Drawing both on new material like Confessions of the Flesh, the 4th volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality and on Foucault and Deleuze main work, the book covers a variety of topics including the contrast between Foucault’s and Deleuze political understanding of desire and pleasure; the genealogy of desire as a way to investigate the historical shaping of psychoanalysis; the relationship between psychoanalysis and the normalizing mechanisms of power (e.g. biopolitics and disciplinary regimes); the ways in which psychoanalysis and neoliberalism come together in particular moments, the status and role of desire in revolt, resistance, and transformation; Foucault and Deleuze’s different approaches to the unconscious; the role of desire in the formation of identity; etc.,. In the 50th anniversary of Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, one of the major references that inspires the many chapters in this book, we aim to pay homage to these two important figures of contemporary thought by enriching and opening new lines of thought and problematization of the political reflection on Desire that Foucault and Deleuze developed.
