Birth of Biopolitics announced

The English translation of The Birth of Biopolitics is scheduled for an 11 April 2008 release.

From the publisher:

Michel Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France in 1979, The Birth of Biopolitics, pursue and develop further the themes of his lectures from the previous year, Security, Territory, Population.  Having shown how Eighteen century political economy marks the birth of a new governmental rationality – seeking maximum effectiveness by governing less and in accordance with the naturalness of the phenomena to be governed – Michel 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 characterises 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 Collège de France, this was Michel Foucault’s sole foray into the field of contemporary history.  This course thus 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 twentieth 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.

Foucault’s analysis also highlights the paradoxical role played by “society” in relation to government.  “Society” is both 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.    

Foucault as phenomenologist

Barry Stocker, a philosopher in Istanbul, makes the case for Foucault as phenomenologist:

My main thoughts are that Foucault is not the kind of social constructivist he is often taken to be; and that his epistemology can be better understood if it is interpreted in a Phenomenological context. The Phenomenological aspect of Foucault should orientate understanding away from intellectual construction to embodiment, the extended mind, and perceptibility. All the discussion of archeology, genealogy, the order of discourse and so on, can be better understood as bringing perception into the conceptual than as conceptual construction.

Throughout the phases of his work, there is a constant underlying concern with Phenomenological themes. If he’s talking about abstract discourse or about punishment of criminals, Foucault is always concerned with the revelation of truth. Truth is appearing, there is a coming into light. The last phrase is very reminiscient of Heidegger. Heidegger turned Husserl’s abstract transcendental forms of Phenomenology into Being-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world is a big thought in Heidegger, but here we can say it includes the concrete experience of always existing in a world of care, concern and Being-with.

More.