Foucault, 'On the Government of the Living,' Chapter 1

We began, as per usual, with questions:

- The discussion of the shepherd and the Emporer (top of p. 4) may point us toward something like a genealogy of sovereign power.

- Shift to a notion of government by truth from a notion of knowledge-power.  Foucault says that the notion of government is "much more operational" than the notion of power (12).  Is that connected with the art of government being connected to, or operated on, conduct ("to conduct their conduct") (12)?

- In Foucault's discussions of 16c. witch hunts (10), he doesn't discuss the colonial aspects of this set of practices and the way the state sought to exercise a power over it.  In decolonial thought, these practices can be read as a social force by which women passed on indigenous knowledge.  But why is this set to the side by Foucault?  Why doesn't he attend to these dynamics?  What's lost here?

- Foucault's discussion of "terror" as the fifth of five 'principles' of truth (bottom p. 15) is of interest.  How does truth function in a way where everyone can be "actually aware" of what is happening but noentheless allow it to happen?

- Foucault describes truth in terms of excessiveness (17), expenditure (9), and more than useful (6).  In what ways is this contrary to Foucault's supposed 'pragmatism'?  In what ways is this also counter to any and all economistic conceptions of knowledge, truth, rationality, &c.?

- How would an inquiry into gov-truth relations be distinct from an inquiry into 'Society'?  Why make this distinction?  What is at stake in it, for Foucault?  See Foucault's discussion on the bottom of page 16.

The group, then, began its discussions:

The general problematic for the lectures, as established in Chapter 1, is to think about the relation between the epistemological and the political (page 4), but without explicating this relationship according to a logic of "economic need" that would be "utilitarian" (page 5), or "reduced to pure and simple utility" (6).

So the core problem is how to explicate and analyze epistemic-political relations without reducing them to utility (be it economic utility, biological utility, class utility, &c.)?

The first shift (p. 11) was ideology to power-knowledge.

The second analytical shift (p. 12ff) was from power-knowledge to government-truth.  The latter "involves giving a positive and differentiated content to" the epistemic and the political.  Does he mean by "positive" something like "empirical" so that "positive and differentiated" is something like "empirical and analytical"?

In terms of one half of the second shift, MF discusses his analytical shift from "power" to "government".  In terms of the positive and differentiated conduct, MF says that the focus of government is to analyze "mechanisms and procedures intended to conduct men, to direct their conduct, to conduct their conduct" (12).  And why is this "positive and differentiated"?  

In terms of the second half of the second shift, this is what MF proposes to study in these lectures.  After addressing five notions of the gov-truth relation that are all to "narrow" (16), he comes to his view.  His view is that the work of government "entails" or "requires" the manifestation of truth (17) and in a way that "goes beyond the aim of government" (17) and so is not purely useful in the way of governing.

Chapter Four for next time....