Readings #1: Foucault - Security, Territory, Population

Hi everyone, I am testing out a new message board system that doesn't have advertisements for our Critical Geography Working Group. Please respond to this posting to submit all comments related to the first set of readings from Foucault's Security, Territory, Population. Just click the "Post Reply" tab above to post your comments. For username, just type in your name. There's no need to create a formal login and password, since guests are allowed to respond to posted messages. I look forward to meeting everyone on Wednesday, 28 November, at the University Club on the 11th Floor of Rudder Tower at 4:15pm. Reuben Rose-Redwood

Hi Reuben
I am pleased that you took the time to find this message board. It is great and it does offer more options than the advert one. I especiall like the Emoticons
Thanks again for your work on this!
-Wendy

I'm just testing out the message board as a "guest" to see if it works without having to register with a userID and password. It looks like it works fine.....The only downside is that it asks you to type in an extra code that it provides once you "send" your message. -Reuben

A few thoughts to spark a discussion:

For a long time, the only portion of this set of lectures that had been translated into English was the lecture of February 1 (Chapter 4), in which Foucault contrasts sovereignty, discipline, and government. It is in this lecture that he provides a rough sketch of the notion of "governmentality" with its primary target of "population" and its chief mechanism: the "apparatuses of security" (p. 108). Most of the critical Anglo-geographical literature on governmentality has been based on this one lecture, yet it is in the January 11 and April 5 lectures that the question of spatiality is considered in more greater detail.

Questions:

1. Foucault is often associated with questions concerning the relation of space, knowledge, and power, yet most commentators reduce Foucault simply to the theorist of the Panopticon and his notion of disciplinary power (as he elaborates it in the book, Discipline and Punish). In Security, Territory, Population, however, he is not so much interested in discipline as in the emergence of what he calls the "spaces of security." Foucault notes that "problems of space are equally common" to sovereignty, discipline, and security, yet in different ways (p. 12). How does the organization of space differ among these? At first, Foucault notes that "we could say that sovereignty is exercised within the borders of a territory, discipline is exercised on the bodies of individuals, and security is exercised over a whole population" (p. 11)....yet then he goes on to add that this view "does not hold together" (p. 11) because each of these mechanisms of power comes with its own multiplicities. Yet, in many respects the above quote does seem to capture much of Foucault's distinctions between sovereignty, discipline, and security. How could one best summarize the spatial implications of these different conceptions of power?

2. Is Foucault's conception of "spaces of security" from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries any different than the securitization of space occurring today? How has the dynamic between sovereignty, discipline, and security (government) changed during the 20th/21st centuries?

Reuben, your question is a useful starting point for discussion--much better that starting off with, "so, what do you all think?" I suggest that all future discussions be started in this way. I expect we may quickly bog down in disagreements over the meaning of the three operative terms: sovereignty, discipline, and security. Foucault uses each in a way that is, at the same time, vague and tendentious: his purpose being (I suppose) to disguise technical terms of Foucaldian analysis as common concepts generally understood. We may save ourselves a good deal of misunderstanding if we don't begin with an assumption that these words convey their conventional meanings.

It was great to see many of you at the first meeting. I thought perhaps we could keep the conversation going by reflecting on some of the key points of the discussion. Trying to pin down exactly what Foucault means by the term "governmentality" is more complex than it may seem. On the one hand, he is talking about the birth of statistics, with population as its target of government, and the mechanisms of security as its primary apparatus. Yet, he also discusses "government" in a much broader sense, to refer to everything from the governance of the family, the self, and the state. (Yet, I would argue that he examines the concept of government not as a Platonic Ideal Form, but as a historically specific discourse on mechanisms of governing). As Tina pointed out, this lecture course can be read productively along with the earlier series on Society Must Be Defended to get a better sense of Foucault's conception of non-sovereign power. His notion of "pastoral power" is also central to understanding how the state took on the responsibility of accounting for "each and all," just as a shepherd governs a flock (see Plato's The Statesman). Yet, as Jonathan noted, in recent decades the state has withdrawn from this pastoral role as deregulation and privatization have altered the way in which spaces of security are produced today.

Foucault problematizes notions of sovereignty and government, but it was noted at the meeting that he appears to take for granted basic geographical categories, such as "East" and "West," leading some to ask whether Foucault himself succumbed to the Orientalist discourse that posits a binary opposition between East and West. This question will be addressed in one of the chapters (by S. Legg) that we will be reading for the next meeting.

A few other questions and comments that were raised at the meeting:

* If Foucault is examining the birth of modern governmentality, and the transition from the dominance of sovereignty, why does he ignore mechanisms of power in feudal societies? Or is his discussion of the discourse on giving advice to the Prince an attempt to address this question?
* He mentions that governmentality is specific to "Western history," which seems to replicate the same Eurocentrism of much traditional social theory.
* Does his theorization apply mainly to France and Western Europe? How broadly can we generalize? Is it a matter of Western governmentality diffusing to other regions or was there a more complex historico-geographical dynamic at work? It seems to me that Foucault really only scratches the surface when it comes to considering the myriad techniques of spatial identification and knowledge production. How might we move beyond the obsession with statistics as a governmental technology?
* Does anti-foundationalism inevitably lead to relativism and the vanishing point of transcendentalism, as Jonathan suggestions? To put it another way, if God does not exist, then is all really permitted? I don't think so, but that was one of the points of debate at the session, since Foucault mentions this particular reference in the text.
* The structure/agency question arose in relation to the above discussion. Does a recognition of historical contingency vis-a-vis subjectivity necessarily lead to relativism? Or, can we recognize such contingency and work from there as a starting point for considering alternative subjectivities, which are likewise historically contingent?
* It is important to keep in mind that this lecture course was delivered in the late-1970s, and since then much of Foucault's work has been engaged by critical geographers and others. It may appear that there is nothing "new" in this lecture course. Yet, since this is the first time that this course has been translated into English, this text offers a much fuller understanding of Foucault's thought process and arguments (especially as compared to Discipline and Punish).....

The modern Western state exhibits "governmentality" in its intrusive efforts to shape the behavior and mind of its subjects. Thus the totalitarian state is one in which governmentality receives fullest expression, but liberal democracies also work hard to produce liberal democrats. There is some resemblance between this and the ancient Greek polis, but I think it is fair to say that governmentality is distinctly modern. It is also, I think, Western, since the rationalized and disciplined lives of Westerners are certainly part of the explanation of Western hegemony. The question, I suppose, is whether the comfort and security of a "governmentalized" society are worth the autonomy that must be surrendered. (This autonomy was, historically, the autonomy of families. The autonomous individual is a creature of the modern state.)


Anti-foundationalism does not necessarily lead to relativism. One can be a pragmatist, or a Nietzschean, or just a postmodern nice guy who won't say anything that would hurt another person's feelings. The point I was trying to make is that a person cannot relativize or transcend their social and historical circumstances--regard them critically or ironically--and then choose some other set of circumstances that they prefer. This is because, as the Buddhists teach, transcendence annihilates desire, and with it the grounds for choice. This is a real difficulty for "critical" scholars. The detachment of their "critical" stance removes the grounds for the strong moral intuitions that are no less part of their critical stance.

Yet, hopefully being "critical" means being engaged rather than being detached? Isn't detachment the ultimate rally cry for positivism with its strict distinction between positive and normative statements, and value-free neutrality and objectivity? Critical scholarship, as I see it, seeks to dispel the myth of value-free knowledge and its elusive and detached view-from-nowhere......

Reuben, I think you've put your finger on the problem. Critical geographers are "engaged" with the problems they study, meaning that they take sides, make value judgments, and work to secure particular outcomes. This is due to what I describe as their "strong moral intuitions." But prior to doing this, in order to assume the critical attitude, they must have to some degree "disengaged" from the dominant assumptions and prejudices of their native culture/tradition (which is on the other side, has different values, and understands another outcome as "justice"). And having detached themselves from this, I cannot see where their strong moral intuitions--usually described in terms of "justice"--come from.

But certainly culture and tradition are not monolithic. Assuming a critical stance need not imply disengagement from cultural traditions, since every culture is a multiplicity composed of contradictory beliefs and practices. In Foucault's terms, critical geographers seek to engage with the "subjugated knowledges" that the dominant cultural traditions have sought to silence with claims of social and scientific authority (see Foucault's Society Must Be Defended). It is not a matter of detaching oneself completely from one's cultural traditions to become "critical" but rather challenging the very notion that culture is timeless and eternal, rejecting the notion that cultural identity is self-evident and coherent....which are all cherished beliefs of cultural essentialists and purists. It is a matter of questioning the status-quo that benefits from unequal power relations, whether they be expressed in political, economic, social, or cultural terms.

If the beliefs of a "culture" are indeed "contradictory," it is hard to see what grounds there are for calling it a culture. This is not to say that a culture is or ought to be "monolithic," but that some agreement is essential to culture as a coherent concept. This can be agreement about what is presently undecided, or undecidable, and hence a source of disagreement. Of course a society can have contradictory beliefs. The fact that a "knowledge" (culture?) is not widespread or well known is not evidence that it has been "subjugated." It may have limited appeal, be very new, bring disastrous consequences, etc. No one, including conservatives, argues that culture is or ought to be "timeless," but they would prefer that culture change through development (staying the same culture) rather than revolution (changing into a different, perhaps contradictory culture). Do unequal power relations confer benefits? Or are they benefits conferred by something else?

One characteristic of disciplinary power, as outlined by Foucault in Security, Territory, Population and elsewhere, is its attempt to partition the world into apparently manageable objects to be arranged in a coherent order. The belief that cultures are coherent structures composed of "essential" features without internal contradictions has much in common with such disciplinary logic. What seems missing from such a conception of culture is the complex hybridity of many cultural practices. Isn't the struggle over determining what is, or is not, "essential" to a culture precisely what is at stake in the so-called "culture wars" over defining national identity? Perhaps geographic scale is important here: a culture may seem coherent at one scale, but when looked at from another scale, the contradictions are more apparent?