Patton, New 'Constellations' article

Discussion Notes on Patton’s, “Life, Legitimation, and Government” (2011, Constellations: 35-45)

We began the discussion, as per usual, with questions.

1. Is Patton making too much of the decrease of focus on biopower in Foucault’s work in the late seventies? Patton suggests that biopower gets eclipsed in MF’s later work when he works with an analytic of governmentality. The article starts with a strong claim, “the concepts of biopolitics and bipower do not play a major role in Foucault’s work.” But the logic of the argument given for this thesis may also suggest that the concept of discipline does not play a major role in Foucault’s work. But that, it was suggested, can’t be right.

2. Is there a positive account of biopower in Patton, beyond the minimalism that Patton negatively suggests? A suggestion: What do techniques of biopower look like? Are these techniques ever dissociated from discipline? What about the idea (not nec. In Patton) that biopower does not have its own techniques, but always relies on techniques of other forms of power. This suggests that biopower is strictly representational, and not concerned with practice. Biopower as such is a discourse object, but not an object of practice.

3. We need another chart to figure out the relationship between governmentality, disciplinary power, biopower, security, etc.. Why can’t biopower be a way of thinking about a certain form that governmentality takes?

4. We need to come to terms with the following analytical distinction(s): Exercise of power | Representation of power (p. 38 and throughout). Does this map to a genealogy | archaeology distinction? (Answer: maybe.) What other distinctions does it map to? Does it map to a general | particular distinction? (Answer: no.) What is Patton’s claim about biopower in terms of this distinction?

With questions on the table, discussion of questions then began. We focused mostly on (2) and (4).

2. With respect to this question, a view was suggested that biopower is discursive rather than practical (call this view BD=biopower as discourse). The discussion at this point did not tack too closely to the article, but it was tied in later with the discussion of (4) that ensued.

BD: biopower operates on the level of discourse or representation, but is not itself a technique. Patton is not suggesting this explicitly, but it is one of making sense of Foucault's usage of biopower based upon the reading offered in the article.

BP: It was objected against BD that the very point of the concept of biopower is to suggest that populations can be a direct object of scrutiny, and thus that techniques that work over this object are themselves evidence of biopower functioning at the level of the exercise of power (call this view BP=biopower as practice).

BD: The response on behalf of BD was that, at the level of deployment, the techniques cannot be strictly biopolitical. The suggestion, clarified, is that there are techniques that get deployed on behalf of biopower, but that the difference that is biopower occurs at the level of discourse rather than practice.

BP: It was objected to BD that there are specifically biopolitical techniques: statistical sampling, vaccination, inoculation, economic techniques such as trade tariffs, &c..

BD: The response on behalf of BD was that these techniques, in order to be deployed, must be deployed at the individual level, and so rely on discipline.

BP: The objection to this was that of course biopower will tend to make use of disciplinary individualization in order to perform its work, but that biopower also implements techniques of its own. What are most measures of public health if not deployments of power at the level of the exercise of power, with its own distinctive ensemble of apparatus, technicians, and techniques?

BD: You can always traces these uses back to populations, even if these populations weren’t recognized as such. This suggests that Agamben, or at least a certain reading of him, was right: discipline and biopower were always essential to politics, and that biopower was about representation, and discipline about technique/exercise.

…

These objections to BD were forwarded by most of the group on behalf of a view suggesting something like BDP (biopower is discursive and practical at once, and that is the point of a genealogy). STill, it should be accepted that for most examples we could draw on, those that are organized by biopolitics are also organized by discipline. It must be underscored that the difference between biopower and discipline is not a dichotomy but rather a distinction. One concluding thought: biopower, discipline, sovereignty are all modes of power: they are enacted at both the representational (conceptual) and the practical (material) level and there are distinctive uses of each on both registers. But there are manifest overlaps.

4. We then discussed the representation | technique (or theory | practice) analytical distinction. This distinction does not map to that between general | particular. The distinction rather maps to that between technology and technique, or discourse (logic) and practice (action), or concept and materiality. This is a useful analytical distinction, but Foucault’s advantage is that he did not turn it into a dichotomy. In Hacking’s term, the value of archaeology and genealogy is that it provides an analytic for getting a grip on ‘looping effects’.

Patton thinks Foucault confuses representation and technique (“Foucault confuses the exercise and the representation of power” (38)). Patton sees Foucault as claiming to track techniques of power, but presenting findings, at least initially, in terms of representation/theory of power. This seems puzzling to many members of the group. But it fits well with (BD) in (2) above. Patton then suggests a little later that “it is at this level [of the exercise of power] that the transformation takes place” (38).

This leads in the article into a brief, and somewhat confusing for some of us, discussion of Agamben. Patton suggests that Agamben's homo sacer thesis is consistent with Foucault. If Foucault’s work is a representation of biopower, then this is consistent with Agamben’s representation of the seed of life in sovereign power. So Agamben is a good Foucaultian, but only if Foucault’s work on power is primarily operating at the level of representation.

It was suggested by some that Patton seems to think that biopower for Foucault is a representational concept, and that transformations in the workings of power are developed by Foucault in the light of analytical constructions such as security, neoliberalism, etc.. Biopower, as a representation, is always mediated by a technique.

But is Foucault’s work on biopower just a representation? This seems like a puzzling claim. Foucault’s work is never just representation or just technique. (Is this what Patton is claiming?) Foucault’s genealogies work at the level of representation and technique, and this is also the case with biopower.

Admin Discussion/Notes

Spring Qtr Reading Schedule below

Note: We will be reading each other’s work on methodological questions/issues during Spring term.

Note: Meetings Wed 11a-1p, location tba

Colin – three or four chapters from forthcoming Genealogy ms. (read early)

Vernon – response to Collier concerning topology (ready early)

Greg – a piece (for Poli Sci Methods course) on method with an empirical focus (ready late)

George – material on Austin & Foucault (ready early-late)

Nicolae – on Foucault & Chomsky (ready late)

Katherine – a piece on genealogy (ready mid-late)

Paul Rabinow – April 13^th in anticipation of possible April 15^th visit

so that amounts to 9 pieces for 9 weeks (plus maybe week 10)