Thread by @GJosephRoche

Second lecture, January 14, 1976.

As I see it, today’s lecture covers two main topics:

1⃣ a discussion of methodology in relation to the study of power

2⃣ a discussion of two forms of state power: sovereign power & what Foucualt will later call biopower.

The discussion of sovereign power & biopower might give us a useful way to think about one aspect of our current moment: the pandemic & anti-mask/ anti-lockdown movements. I’ll come back to that. But, for now, to the lecture itself…

Is war a useful model for understanding power?

MF opens his second lecture with this question. He wants to begin—“and to do no more than begin”—exploring whether war can provide a “a principle that can help us understand and analyze political power…”

In order to approach this question, MF wants to return to & sum up his work from the past five or so years, despite admitting that this work “has not gone very far.”

Since 1970 or so, MF has been studying the ‘how’ of power. He has been looking at how power operates through two ‘markers’ or ‘limits’: right & truth. He will explore the relationship between power, truth & right over the course of this lecture.

MF speaks briefly about truth & power: how truth is produced in relation to power & how truth becomes a form of power. “[W]e are… subject to truth in the sense that truth lays down the law; [W]e are judged, condemned, forced to perform tasks, & destined to live & die" by truth.

He then turns to look at right & power. The relationship between right & power, he says, emerged during the Middle Ages in relation to royal power, when “the king, his rights, his power, & the possible limits of his power” emerged as the center of the juridical system.

Power was tied up in the rights of kings in two senses:

1⃣ the sovereign’s ‘natural’ right to rule &

2⃣ the need to limit that right & restrain the king through law.

Either way, rights pertained to the sovereign & the problem of sovereignty.

MF then begins offering his methodological precautions in the study of power. He says these precautions are necessary as part of an effort to bypass the problem of sovereignty, of only viewing power as centralized in the sovereign. He offers 5⃣ precautions.

1⃣ we should understand power by “looking at its extremities, at its outer limits”

2⃣ instead of seeking the motives & strategies of the dominant, we should focus on the sites where power is exercised

3⃣ we should examine how power circulates, how it passes through people

4⃣ we should “make an ascending analysis of power”—begin with the “infinitesimal mechanisms” of power & work backwards from there

5⃣ we should consider ideology as an integral part of these networks of power, not as a sort of excuse or cover for domination

Foucault’s summary of these methodological precautions is worth quoting in full:

MF says that if we take such an approach, “one massive historical fact emerges.” are you ready for

ONE

MASSIVE

HISTORICAL

FACT?

Foucault's on massive fact is the emergence of the sovereign mode of power in the Middle Ages. He says this form of power was “coextensive with the general mechanics of power [& with] the entire social body.”

However, this started to change in the 17th & 18th centuries, with the emergence of a new mechanism of power that was “absolutely incompatible with relations of sovereignty.” This is what Foucault will call biopower, though he doesn’t introduce that term until later.

Sovereign power & biopower are opposed in terms of:

➡️ what they are applied to (territory vs bodies)

➡️ what they extract (wealth vs time & labor)

➡️ how they are exercised (discontinuous interventions vs constant surveillance)

Despite being opposed, these two modes of power coexist. They are in constant tension, shifting in relation to one another. 👑⚡️↔️🌴⚡️

Sovereign power lives on in the juridical systems. It has been democratized as the system of rights, which are individual expressions of collective sovereignty. We thus now see tension between:

1⃣collective surveillance/coercion/discipline

2⃣individual rights & sovereignty

Sovereign power operates through the law, as an assertion of rights. Biopower operates through the human sciences to regulate & normalize behavior. This brings us back to the triangular relationship Foucault described at the start, between power, right & truth.

Foucault says that the tensions between sovereign power & biopower are shifting: “the techniques of discipline & discourses born of discipline are invading right & …normalizing procedures are increasingly colonizing the procedures of the law.”

One product of this tension is that when we want to object to the discipline of normalizing society, we do so in terms of rights: “…the famous old formal, bourgeois right. And it is in reality the right of the sovereign.” But, Foucault says, it won’t work.

“…at this point we are in a sort of bottleneck… having recourse to sovereignty against discipline will not enable us to limit the effects of disciplinary power.” Instead, he says, we need a new right that is both anti-disciplinary and anti-sovereign.

And here he draws the lecture to an abrupt conclusion. He says he might discuss repression in his next lecture, if he feels like it & if he can be bothered to (he doesn’t). Or, he will talk about the problem of war (which is what he planned to talk about in this lecture).

So, I think we can use these ideas to think about what’s happening with the pandemic & anti-maskers et al. The gov’t responses—lockdowns, surveillance, etc.—are good examples of the biopolitical discipline that Foucault is talking about, using science to coercively normalize.

Anti-maskers represent a resurgence of sovereign power. They’re attempting to counter discipline by asserting right, which they do by undermining truth. The pandemic thus brings into focus the tension in two modes of power operating in society today.

I won't pursue this analysis further, but will just leave with a question. Is it more productive to think of 'Bunnings Karen' simply as a 'covidiot,' or as an expressions of fundamental & irresolvable tensions in the modes of power that suffuse contemporary society?