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The Birth Of Biopolitics : Lectures At The College De France, 1978 1979Stock informationGeneral Fields
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DescriptionMichel Foucault's 1979 lectures at the College de France, The Birth of Biopolitics, pursue and develop further the themes of his lectures from the previous year, Security, Territory, Population. Having shown how eighteenth century political economy marks the birth of a new governmental reason, Foucault undertakes the detailed analysis of the forms of 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 characterizes 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 College de France, this was Michel Foucault's sole foray into the field of contemporary history. This course 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 twenty-first 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, or economic man. Foucault's analysis also highlights the paradoxical role played by "society" in relation to government. "Society" is 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. Reviews'Once more Michel Foucault demonstrates that he was perhaps the most prescient and challenging thinker of the twentieth century, and these lectures from 1978-9 have an enduring relevance for all those seeking to understand the forms of liberalism under which we are governed at the start of the twenty first century.' - Nikolas Rose, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK Author descriptionMICHEL 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, Series Editor, 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 is Translator, and has written essays on Michel Foucault and is an Editor of The Foucault Effect. Table of contentsForeword: Francois Ewald and Alessandro Fontana 10 January 1979 17 January 1979 24 January 1979 31 January 1979 7 February 1979 14 February 1979 21 February 1979 7 March 1979 14 March 1979 21 March 1979 28 March 1979 4 April 1979 Course Summary Course Content Index of Names Index of Concepts and Notions |