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The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979

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The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979

By: Michel Foucault  

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this liberal governmentality.  This involves describing the political rationality within which the specific problems of life and population were posed:  "Studying liberalism as the general framework of biopolitics".
 
What are the specific features of the liberal art of government as they were outlined in the Eighteenth century?  What crisis of governmentality characterises the present world and what revisions of liberal government has it given rise to?  This is the diagnostic task addressed by Foucault's study of the two major twentieth century schools of neo-liberalism:  German ordo-liberalism and the neo-liberalism of the Chicago School.  In the years he taught at the Collège de France, this was Michel Foucault's sole foray into the field of contemporary history.  This course thus raises questions of political philosophy and social policy that are at the heart of current debates about the role and status of neo-liberalism in twentieth century politics.  A remarkable feature of these lectures is their discussion of contemporary economic theory and practice, culminating in an analysis of the model of homo oeconomicus.
 
Foucault's analysis also highlights the paradoxical role played by "society" in relation to government.  "Society" is both that in the name of which government strives to limit itself, but it is also the target for permanent governmental intervention to produce, multiply, and guarantee the freedoms required by economic liberalism.  Far from being opposed to the State, civil society is thus shown to be the correlate of a liberal technology of government.   
Michel Foucault, acknowledged as the pre-eminent philosopher of France in the 1970s and 1980s, continues to have enormous impact throughout the world in many disciplines.

Arnold I. Davidson, editor of the series of Foucault's published lectures, is the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and Professor of the History of Political Philosophy at the University of Pisa.  He is co-editor of the volume Michel Foucault: Philosophie.

Graham Burchell, Translator of this volume, has written essays on Michel Foucault and is an Editor of The Foucault Effect.

This series of lectures presents Foucault's study of the two major twentieth century schools of neo-liberalism: German ordo-liberalism and the neo-liberalism of the Chicago School. In the years he taught at the Collège de France, this was Michel Foucault's sole foray into the field of contemporary history. This course thus raises questions of political philosophy and social policy that are at the heart of current debates about the role and status of neo-liberalism in twentieth century politics. A remarkable feature of these lectures is their discussion of contemporary economic theory and practice, culminating in an analysis of the model of Homo oeconomicus.
 
Foucault's analysis also highlights the paradoxical role played by “society” in relation to government. “Society” is both that in the name of which government strives to limit itself, but it is also the target for permanent governmental intervention to produce, multiply, and guarantee the freedoms required by economic liberalism.



Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Release Date: 2008-06-10

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
afterthoughts on the dialectics between "external politics" and "internal politics" in Europe and China - I am a historian doing researches on the economic and legal development in Chinese early modern history. Reading Foucault's The Birth of Biopolitics is a wonderful experience, I learned a lot and cannot help but to think that the dialectics between "external politics" and "internal politics" in Europe from 17thc on may probably constitute an interesting and plausible comparative framework against the deployment of statecraft project in the sixteenth to eighteenth century China.

Customer Review: 1 out of 5
michel Foucault - Michel Foucault was the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. These lectures are the finest examples of his ideas as they formed into the masterworks of his books. It is a rare occasion to watch the unfolding of such profound ideas.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
An analysis of U.S. and German Neo-Liberalism - This book is a collection of lectures that Foucault gave. They are focused on the development of Neo-liberalism after World War II, in Germany and the U.S. Foucault traces the development of this theory and how how it differs in Germany and the U.S. respectively. The book being a collection of his lectures, it is at times choppy when reading, because at times the recordings were not able to pick up what was being said. The editor of the book does a wonderful job at acknowledging these parts, but I did not find them detracting from the work. The editor also wrote the lectures in a way that reproduces the lecture so that one can close their eyes and easily imagine themselves there listing to them. The analysis of Neo-Liberalism in this book is the best that I have ever read, and the depth of thought is amazing. It is not an easy read, but one that anyone interested in theory or Foucault should read. It is enjoyable and worth every penny spent.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
A must read in our changing world - I bought this book in French when it was first published in 2004. At the time the topic meant very little to me in that we were living in a world that had re-elected GWB and seemed somehow to have found stability in its grandiose fantasies... House prices were up up up... The Stock market was up up up... Iraq was becoming another Vietnam ... Liberal thought was as solid a dogma as ever and not a set of evolving ideas ... We lived in a form of ideologically blocked society. `If you're not for us...' The Security volume caught my attention. Last week - after having it literally fall on my knee - I picked it up and opened it. Not only was it fascinating but it helped me understand better the thinking behind the world that fell apart these past six months. A great read and his developments on liberalism are clear and brilliant!

Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Long awaited translation - A book that was due to be translated in English and provides the first attempt of Foucault to cirscumscribe the neoliberal enterprise.

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