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11 JANUARY 1978
General perspective of the lectures: the study of bio-power. ~ Five
proposals on the analysis of mechanisms of power. ~ Legal system,
disciplinary mechanisms, and security apparatuses (dispositifs). Two
examples: (a) the punishment of theft; (b) the treatment of leprosy,
plague, and smallpox. ~ General features of security apparatuses (1): the
spaces of security. ~ The example of the town. ~ Three examples of
planning urban space in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: (a)
Alexandre Le Maître’s La Métropolitée (1682); (b) Richelieu; (c) Nantes.
THIS YEAR I WOULD like to begin studying something that I have
called, somewhat vaguely, bio-power.* By this I mean a number of
phenomena that seem to me to be quite significant, namely, the set of
mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human
species became the object of a political strategy, of a general strategy of
power, or, in other words, how, starting from the eighteenth century,
modern western societies took on board the fundamental biological fact
that human beings are a species. This is roughly what I have called biopower.
So, to begin with, I’d like to put forward a few proposals that
should be understood as indications of choice or statements of intent, not
as principles, rules, or theorems.
First, the analysis of these mechanisms of power that we began
some years ago, and are continuing with now, is not in any way a general
theory of what power is. It is not a part or even the start of such a theory.
This analysis simply involves investigating where and how, between
whom, between what points, according to what processes, and with what
effects, power is applied. If we accept that power is not a substance,
fluid, or something that derives from a particular source, then this
analysis could and would only be at most a beginning of a theory, not of a
theory of what power is, but simply of power in terms of the set of
mechanisms and procedures that have the role or function and theme,
* See, “Il faut défendre la société”. Cours au Collège de France, 1975-1976, ed. M. Bertani and A.
Fontana (Paris: Gallimard-Le Seuil, 1997) p. 216; English translation by David Macey, “Society Must
Be Defended”. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976, ed. M. Bertani and A. Fontana, English
series ed. Arnold Davidson (New York: Picador, 2003), p. 243: “What does this new technology of
power, this biopolitics, this bio-power that is beginning to establish itself, involve?”; La Volonté de
savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) p. 184; English translation by Robert Hurley, The History of Sexuality,
vol. 1: An Introduction (New York: Pantheon, 1978) p. 140.
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even when they are unsuccessful, of securing power. It is a set of
procedures, and it as such, and only as such, that the analysis of
mechanisms of power could be understood as the beginnings of
something like a theory of power.
Second indication of choice: the relations, the set of relations, or
rather, the set of procedures whose role is to establish, maintain, and
transform mechanisms of power, are not “self-generating”* or “selfsubsistent”†;
they are not founded on themselves. Power is not founded
on itself or generated by itself. Or we could say, more simply, that there
are not first of all relations of production and then, in addition, alongside
or on top of these relations, mechanisms of power that modify or disturb
them, or make them more consistent, coherent, or stable. There are not
family type relationships and then, over and above them, mechanisms of
power; there are not sexual relationships with, in addition, mechanisms of
power alongside or above them. Mechanisms of power are an intrinsic
part of all these relations and, in a circular way, are both their effect and
cause. What’s more, in the different mechanisms of power intrinsic to
relations of production, family relations, and sexual relations, it is
possible, of course, to find lateral co-ordinations, hierarchical
subordinations, isomorphic correspondences, technical identities or
analogies, and chain effects. This allows us to undertake a logical,
coherent, and valid investigation of the set of these mechanisms of power
and to identify what is specific about them at a given moment, for a given
period, in a given field.
Third, the analysis of these power relations may, of course, open
out onto or initiate something like the overall analysis of a society. The
analysis of mechanisms of power may also join up with the history of
economic transformations, for example. But what I am doing – I don’t
say what I am cut out to do, because I know nothing about that – is not
history, sociology, or economics. However, in one way or another, and
for simple factual reasons, what I am doing is something that concerns
philosophy, that is to say, the politics of truth, for I do not see many other
definitions of the word “philosophy” apart from this. So, insofar as what
is involved in this analysis of mechanisms of power is the politics of
truth, and not sociology, history, or economics, I see its role as that of
showing the knowledge effects produced by the struggles, confrontations,
and battles that take place within our society, and by the tactics of power
that are the elements of this struggle.
Fourth indication: I do not think there is any theoretical or
analytical discourse which is not permeated or underpinned in one way or
* autogénétiques: in inverted commas in the manuscript.
† autosubsistantes: in inverted commas in the manuscript.
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