|
''The Birth of Biopolitics'' is a part of a lecture series by French philosopher Michel Foucault at the Collège de France between 1978 and 1979 and published posthumously based on audio recordings. In it, Foucault develops further the notion of biopolitics introduced in a previous lecture series, ''Security, Territory, Population'', by tracing the ways in which the eighteenth-century political economy marked the birth of a new governmental rationality and raising questions of political philosophy and social policy concerning the role and status of neo-liberalism in twentieth century politics. == New rationality == For Foucault, biopolitics is political power exercised on whole populations in every aspect of human life.〔''Security, Territory, Population'' p. 363 (2007)〕 Foucault discusses the basic definition of the practices of the neoliberal art of government. Foucault then tries to redefine the boundaries set by liberal thought on this matter. Foucault concentrates on the monetary aspect of government as a point of concern, frugal government, the art of maximum and a minimum and between the total opposite minimum and maximum.〔''The Birth of Biopolitics'' pp. 27-29 (2008)〕 Foucault looks at the early institutional practices of this method of frugal government, which starts from the early Middle Ages down to the early 16th and 17th centuries. The market appears from the early Middle Ages where the function of interest on money lending was strictly prohibited; one of the reasons being that the church was the main institution lending money at interest on church property where rental income was charged on church property a primary source of income for the church and it would have brought down the price of the church rental income if faced with rival competitors. Justification, according to Foucault, for the market was justice which was why the market existed in the first place. But, what was meant by justice? Foucault offers this explanation; it was a site of justice in the sense that the sale price fixed in the market was seen, both by theorist and in practice, as a just price, or at any rate a price that should be the just price, which meant to the theorists of the day a price that was to have a certain relationship with work performed, with the needs of the merchants, and of course, with the consumers needs and possibilities.〔''The Birth of Biopolitics'' pp. 27-53 (2008)〕 The next general theme Foucault introduces is the German Ordoliberalism, the Freiburg School which produced general problems among themselves, namely the state apparatus and its reconstruction after the Second World War. This general theme led to neo-liberalism heavy reliances on the law obviously, but it too, had to produce a new kind of consensus and a rearrangement consensus between the general populace; the working population, those engaged in production. This general or collective consensus produced 'economic partners' in this so-called 'economic game',〔''The Birth of Biopolitics'' pp. 51-73 (2008)〕 such as; investors, employers, government officials, work force, and trade union officials. Foucault then offers some explanation on what was the reasoning behind this consensus between all these so-called different economic partners. According to Foucault this produced another kind of consensus, which was political power of the electoral community, not the political power of the right to vote, but the right of the political community to exchange seats, a rearrangement of the very relations of the so-called change of 'government' which gives and protects legitimacy. Which becomes political consensus, inasmuch as the 'economic partners 'accept the economic game of freedom. This is very much on neo-liberalism agenda, which according to Foucault was exactly the agenda that neo-liberalism required. A strong Deutschmark, a satisfactory rate of economic growth, increased wages, an expanding purchasing power, and a favorable balance of payments which became a by product of the effects of good government. Foucault reads into this that in contemporary German which was in reality a founding consensus of the state. Foucault notices that this formation of a liberal type of governmentality had general shifts within this circle which can be traced back to the 18th century old or classical liberalism programmed by the Physiocrats, Turgot, and the other economists, for whom the problem was the exact opposite. The problem that neo-liberalism had to resolve was the following: given the existence of a legitimate state, which is fully functional under the police state with all its administration form of police state, how can this be limited within the existing state and, above all, allow for the necessary economic freedom within it. For Foucault, this was the exact opposite because after the Second World War, the war machine that was unleashed was due to the fact that the system of economic rationality had broken down and the organisational network of world trade and its accompanied trade settlement system had completely become untenable, in which trust in the final payment settlement system had completely vanished, therefore initiating the military machine.〔''The Network Of World Trade'' League of Nations 1942〕〔''The World Trade Network'' Luca De Benedicts and Luca Tajoli 2010 (The World Trade Network'' Luca De Benedicts and Luca Tajoli 2010 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Birth of Biopolitics」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|