Governmentality and Foucault's method

Foucault's genealogies of different topics in relation to his overall theory of power as positive are remarkably consistent. Foucault, in each article, and in relation to whatever historical subject he reviews, claims that there is a shift from an older, perhaps simpler, structure of power, to a new, more complex and productive structure. This is evident in his genealogy of "Governmentality," as well as in his concept of Bio-power, and its relation to sex. Of course, none of these topics are independent. In the evolution of power structures from ones that are simple and perhaps negative to ones that employ tactics and norms, the central focus can be seen as the population. The population is the focus and the source of all norms, statistics, and studies. In each of Foucault's critical reviews of historical topics, the transformation of people from subjects to citizens, and accordingly from members of a principality to a population, is the primary means by which power is transformed, or perhaps transforms itself.

This is made explicit in the reading on Governmentality. Foucault's thoughts on punishment as well as his thoughts on sex as structures of power can be encompassed by the transition from the principality to the state. Instead of subjects, people occupying a territory are now citizens, and are able to be controlled, studied, and normalized. The shift in the types of punishment used is concurrent with the shift in the type of government. As sovereignty transitioned towards its positive counterpart, namely, the art of governing, punishment also became institutionalized. As the sovereign's hold on the principality lessened, so did his power over the body, and thus the need for public executions as a symbol of this power. In both situations, there is an abstraction from the simplest level of control, from the body. People were no longer subjects whose lives could be taken away, but now they were citizens who could be controlled through norms, and the sovereign's transition from solely ruling to "administering" called for a different type of punishment. Like I said, the onset of these two phenomena are concurrent, and must be viewed as comprising one overall shift in the technology of power, and Foucault is just addressing two different discourses.

All this is nothing novel. Foucault is aware of this, and is obviously striving for this consistency. In striving quite as much as he does, it seems he may stretch it just a bit. Foucault claims that the end of sovereignty is "internal to itself and possesses its own intrinsic instruments in the shape of its laws." He contrasts this with the end of government, which, he says "resides in the things it manages and in the pursuit of the perfection and intensification of the processes it directs." Foucault comes to this conclusion through his interpretation of what "the common good" refers to for the sovereign. He claims that the common good is internal to sovereignty, specifically, that it consists solely of the citizens obeying the laws, and accomplishing what is set out for them. This interpretation may be valid, but the dissociation Foucault presents between this putative "common good" and the "administration" of government does not seem to be as distinct as he would like. The common good that is the end of sovereignty implies the majority of the ends of government, namely "that the greatest possible quantity of wealth is produced, that the people are provided with sufficient means of subsistence, that the population is enabled to multiply, and so on" (Governmentality, p. 211). These things that La Perrière cites as the ends of Government are already the ends of sovereignty, although the focus may perhaps be different. So, in having this shift in actuality already be implicit, the most Foucault can posit is a change in focus. Government focuses on production whereas sovereignty focused on subjects' obedience to the law. Perhaps this is just a small gripe, but the distinction seems smaller than Foucault would have it. The ends of sovereignty include the ends of government.