Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976 by Michel Foucault

Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976 Reviews

• 
  Andrea

  A lot to grapple with here, and I will do so below more for my memory in writing a dissertation than anything else, so be warned!
  
  I love that this book starts out with Foucault's critique of Marx -- there must be more out there I haven't found in terms of that critique, but this really helped me think through the distinctions as it has always seemed to me that the two could well complement each other. I suppose they still can if broken into pieces and rejoined, but I have a much better sense of how different Foucault's project is.
  
  He argues that Marx, or any other similar over-arching theory such as psychoanalysis, "provided tools that can be used at the local level only when ... the theoretical unity of their discourse is, so to speak, suspended, or at least cut up, ripped up, torn to shreds ..." [6] Why is that, particularly in thinking about theories that have liberation as their goal? Because their effort to unify knowledge into a single framework of understanding is the problem, particularly the way that theoretical frameworks such as Marxism see themselves as a science. This sets up an 'aspiration' to power, where they decide what kinds of knowledge are legitimate and which are not with the aim of organising them, filtering them, putting them into hierarchies to create a body of 'true' knowledge. Foucault argues that this is done primarily to allow Marxism to benefit from the power that Western society has granted scientists and the scientific paradigm, rather than to actually create a Marxism that is scientific. Thus Marxism oppresses.
  
  In opposition to Marxism's (or psychoanalysis's, or liberal economist's or etc) subjugation of various knowledges, Foucault's project is to liberate these various subjugated knowledges: "to set them free, or in other words to enable them to oppose and struggle against the coercion of a unitary, formal, and scientific theoretical discourse" [11]. His archeological work seeks to understand these formal scientific discourses, and his geneological work to liberate the local knowledges that have been subjugated by them.
  
  Got it. Fundamentally antithetical to Marx in its theory, and I couldn't ask for a clearer definition of the archeological v the geneological. (There's also the fact that he ends the lectures with socialism is racism, but more on that later.)
  
  One critique before moving on, Foulcault writes: "When I say "subjugated knowledges" I am also referring to a whole series of knowledges that have been disqualified as nonconceptual knowledges, as insufficiently elaborated knowledges: naive knowledges, hierarchically inferior knowledges, knowledges that are below the required level of erudition or scientificity." I applaud this project of course. My problem with Foucault is always that he writes in a way that cannot engage in dialogue with these knowledges, but can only 'unearth' or worse 'discover' them. Please note the complete absence of the actual people who hold these 'knowledges', whatever those are when separated from their human beings, both from these lectures and presumably from these lecture rooms. Meh.
  
  So onwards.
  
  The question here is what is power, but as Foucault writes: "'What is power?' is obviously a theoretical question that would provide an answer to everything, which is just what I don't want to do" [13]. Instead he wants to try and understand how it operates. He starts with liberalism and Marxism which he believe share the common feature of 'economism' stemming from a juridical understanding of power. In liberalism, "power is regarded as a right which can be possessed in the way one possesses a commodity" [13], it can be traded, taken, given up by political contract and etc. To take that to its conclusion, "There is therefore an obvious analogy, and it runs through all these theories, between power and commodities, between power and wealth" [13].
  
  In Marxism, you have what Foucault calls the "'economic functionality' of power ... to the extent that the role of power is essentially both to perpetuate the relations of production and to reproduce a class domination that is made possible by the development of the productive forces and the ways they are appropriated. In this case, political power finds its historical raison d'etre in the economy" [14].
  
  He moves away from these economistic theories, exploring the ideas that "power is not something that is given, exchanged, or taken back, that it is something that is exercised and that it exists only in action," and that "power is not primarily the perpetuation and renewal of economic relations, but that it is primarily, in itself, a relationship of force... Power is essentially that which represses." [15]
  
  And so we come to the crux of Foucault's argument (and his difference from Marxism and liberalism) "rather than analyzing it [power] in terms of surrender, contract, and alienation, or rather than analyzing it in functional terms as the reproduction of the relations of production, shouldn't we be analyzing it first and foremost in terms of conflict, confrontation, and war?
  
  Here he inverts Clausewitz's aphorism to ask whether 'politics is the continuation of war by other means', and continues to state the ideas he will explore through the rest of the book in a nutshell. If politics is the continuation of war by other means, then (my own underlining for emphasis):
  

  This would imply three things. First, that power relations, as they function in a society like ours, are essentially anchored in a certain relationship of force that was established in and through war at a given historical moment that can be historically specified. And while it is true that political power puts an end to war and establishes or attempts to establish the reign of peace in civil society, it certainly does not do so in order to suspend the effects of power or to neutralize the disequilibrium revealed by the last battle of the war. According to this hypothesis, the role of [15] political power is perpetually to use a sort of silent war to reinscribe that relationship of force, and to reinscribe it in institutions, economic inequalities, language, and even the bodies of individuals. This is the initial meaning of our inversion of Clausewitz's aphorism-politics is the continuation of war by other means. Politics, in other words, sanctions and reproduces the disequilibrium of forces manifested in war. Inverting the proposition also means something else, namely that within this "civil peace," these political struggles, these clashes over or with power, these modifications of relations of force-the shifting balance, the reversals-in a political system, all these things must be interpreted as a continuation of war. And they are interpreted as so many episodes, fragmentations, and displacements of the war itself. We are always writing the history of the same war, even when we are writing the history of peace and its institutions.
  
  Inverting Clausewitz's aphorism also has a third meaning: The final decision can come only from war, or in other words a trial by strength in which weapons are the final judges. It means that the last battle would put an end to politics, or in other words, that the last battle would at last-and I mean "at last"-suspend the exercise of power as continuous warfare. [16]

  
  
  That's a definition and a half, which seems to mean that the achievement of any victory against the status quo requires a battle of strength in which weapons are the final judge. I guess we're all heading back to the mountains and jungles then, no?
  
  But maybe he jests, because we're only studying power after all.
  
  The next chapter shows nicely how he turns things upside down. Where the traditional question as he sees it would ask "How does the discourse of truth establish the limits of power's right?" Foucault would ask "What are the rules of right that power implements to produce discourses of truth? Or: What type of power is it that is capable of producing discourses of power that have, in a society like ours, such powerful effects?" It's a good illustration, as are the following 5 methodological precautions, which stand as an excellent summary of what Foucault thinks power is, and what power is not (while also making him sound a bit like a Buddhist text). They in turn are summed up thus:
  
  

  To sum up these five methodological precautions, let me say that rather than orienting our research into power toward the juridical edifice of sovereignty, State apparatuses, and the ideologies that accompany them, I think we should orient our analysis of power toward material operations, forms of subjugation, and the connections among and the uses made of the local systems of subjugation on the one hand, and apparatuses of knowledge on the other. [34]

  
  
  This differentiation between state apparatus and material operations is carried through in his discussion of sovereignty and the discourse of rights that emerged in response to it. Foucault suggests that the mechanism of power shifted in the 17th and 18th centuries from essentially feudal monarchy to the kind of power discussed above, while the theorisations of struggle against it did not make the same shift. Whereas power ceased to be about land and goods and legal rights, the critics continued to treat it so while in fact it had become much more about control of time and labour, surveillance, and the mechanics of discipline. Hobbes, for example, in looking at contracts and rights as the foundation for sovereignty completely ignores, and actually hides the fact that power relations have nothing to do with right and everything to do with domination. It is rare you find groups like the Diggers who are able to articulate in some manner that this domination is the problem, rather than Norman lords instead of Saxon lords or what have you.
  
  One of the key sections of the book is of course on race and racism, and a remarkably interesting and unique take on both really that is rich and provocative though I'm not sure what I think about it yet. In a highly simplified form if I understand the argument right: we have long had a concept of sovereignty as legitimate state-based power which words and history existed to praise and exalt to the exclusion (and obfuscation) of all other ideas. Slowly this shifted as a new discourse came into being, a counterhistory of dissent and revolution acknowledging the oppressed and the subjugated. As power and sovereignty was based on the conquest of one people by another (connecting back to Clausewitz's aphorism though it somehow feels far distant), this took the form of race struggle, a binary struggle of peoples in which everyone was on either one side or the other, their side defining their discourses of truth. In the 16th century what was initially seen as race struggle slowly became seen as class struggle in these counterhistories, and so race began to be used by the counterhistory arising in opposition to the original counterhistories (you can see why this is difficult but this new counterhistory is in the service of those with power). It was reformulated with medical and biological meaning, and as Foucault states: "Whereas the discourse of races, of the struggle between races, was a weapon to be used against the historico-political discourse of Roman sovereignty, the discourse of race (in the singular) was a way of turning that weapon against those who had forged it, of using it to preserve the sovereignty of the State" [81]. Essentially it sought to preserve power and centralise/control discourse through defining the State in terms of its need for protection against the other, the subrace, the enemy. Thus, he argues, racism is only a stage in this larger discourse of race struggle.
  
  He returns to race in the last lecture, which introduces the idea of biopolitics -- a term I've always found very off-putting but never mind. Essentially it is a new function of government from "sovereignty's old right -- to take life or let live" to "the power to "make" live and "let" die" [241]. It is the State in its new function of measuring and monitoring, nurturing and manipulating the mass of the population for its own benefit rather than simply disciplining individual bodies. This new form of politics does not replace the old, rather it complements and articulates with it in a highly insidious fashion primarily through institutions and specialised scientific knowledges and the development of norms to which individuals and general society must live up to.
  
  Within this new method of governing, racism becomes first, a way to fragment and divide the population for improved control. That's easy to understand, I'm not sure I fully grasp what follows. In a war situation, it is easy to legitimate that the other 'people' must die in order that our 'people' may live, thereby giving the state expanded power over life and death. Racism recreates this latitude granted under conditions of war for a regime of biopolitics: "in other words, killing or the imperative to kill is acceptable only if it results not in a victory over political adversaries, but in the elimination of the biological threat to and the improvement of the species or race. There is a direct connection between the two. In a normalizing society, race or racism is the precondition that makes killing acceptable." [256] So perhaps that makes sense of this:
  

  And we can also understand why racism should have developed in modern societies that function in the biopower mode; we can understand why racism broke out at a number of privileged moments, and why they were precisely the moments when the right to take life was imperative. Racism first develops with colonization, or in other words, with colonizing genocide. If you are functioning in the biopower mode, how can you justify the need to kill people, to kill populations, and to kill civilizations? By using the themes of evolutionism, by appealing to a racism.

  
  
  This of course changes war as well, "it is not simply a matter of destroying a political adversary, but of destroying the enemy race". It makes more sense of Nazism and Stalinism. And I don't think that it is trying to take the place of other ideas and meanings of race as they lived and experienced, but rather goes deeper adding a new dimension:
  

  here, we are far removed from the ordinary racism that takes the traditional form of mutual contempt or hatred between races. We are also far removed from the racism that can be seen as a sort of ideological operation that allows States, or a class, to displace the hostility that is directed toward [them), or which is tormenting the social body, onto a mythical adversary. I think that this is something much deeper than an old tradition, much deeper than a new ideology, that it is something else. The specificity of modern racism, or what gives it its specificity, is not bound up with mentalities, ideologies, or the lies of power. It is bound up with the technique of power, with the technology of power. It is bound up with this, and that takes us as far away as possible from the race war and the intelligibility of history. We are dealing with a mechanism that allows biopower to work. So racism is bound up with the workings of a State that is obliged to use race, the elimination of races and the purification of the race, to exercise its sovereign power. The juxtaposition of-or the way biopower functions through-the old sovereign power of life and death implies the workings, the introduction and activation, of racism. And it is, I think, here that we find the actual roots of racism. [258]

  
  It is this much wider more difficult idea of racism that allows Foucault to say "Socialism was a racism from the outset" [261], contentious words. He argues that because socialism never recognised biopower as a form of control, and the role that racism has played in that, it has essentially recreated (or sought to recreate) these same controls even while changing the social structure. That I can see and is useful in thinking about what happened in Russia, I'm not sure I agree that it is endemic in socalist thought per se in the following way:
  

  Whenever, on the other hand, socialism has been forced to stress the problem of struggle, the struggle against the enemy, of the elimination of the enemy within capitalist society itself, and when, therefore, it has had to think about the physical confrontation with the class enemy in capitalist society, racism does raise its head, because it is the only way in which socialist thought, which is after all very much bound up with the themes of biopower, can rationalize the murder of its enemies. [262]

  
  There's so much more here, primarily on the practice and discourses of history, and on the nation. I have to change my rating to 5 stars because while I get so frustrated with Foucault and continue to question the utility of his work to practical struggle, it is undoubtedly full of ideas and questions well worth thinking over, and this is definitely a book I'll be returning to. I am certain I will find an entirely new set of brilliant/problematic statements to ponder over, which is impressive.
  
• 
  Jonfaith

  In the things I am presently concerned with, the moment when that which does not exist is inscribed in reality, and when that which does not exist comes under a legitimate regime of the true and false, marks the birth of this dissymmetrical bipolarity of politics and the economy. Politics and the economy are not things that exist, or errors, or ideologies. They are things that do not exist and yet which are inscribed in reality and fall under a regime of truth dividing the truth and the false.
  
  It is quaint growing old. I celebrated my birthday today by coming home and noshing on a wonderful Indian meal with my wife. I retired then to complete this volume and was rather shaken with thought. If this volume is any indication, then the Foucault Lectures series provides a rich trove of erudition and theory and is one which I will mine again and again. The work begins exploring the distinction between Institution and Acquisition as regards to Sovereignty -- lord knows I worried about my deficits per Hobbes and Machiavelli.
  
  It is Foucault's notion of war as politics by other means that strings the text along. the discussion leads to his notion of race, which for Foucault is more a ethnic chauvinism than the American or modern binary opposition. These views at history are simply astonishing. The idea of a dovetail into the nascent biopolitical creates an enticing field of possibility.
  
  
• 
  Troy

  This is the way to read Foucault. I want to read ALL of the lectures. So readable, so clear. Nothing at all like his published books and even more interesting than his interviews, which are usually pretty great. This book is somewhere between listening to Foucault think out loud and having him relate a very consistent and constrained argument. As usual for him, this is about power and knowledge.
  
  This book opens with a bit about how power is projected through discipline (in fact, in the beginning there's a lovely and concise summary of the rough tenants of
  Discipline and Punish). And immediately is followed by describing Foucault's methodology, and what historical information he looks at, and why his methodology is constructed it as it is. If that sounds confusing, trust me when I say that it isn't, and that he writes clearly about what he's interested in, and why.
  
  Also in the beginning, he defends his bookish nature by describing how and why he digs up two different types of lost knowledge: a) specific practical knowledge and guides, and b) local direct histories. (So for example, if looking at the rise of prisons, a) would be architectural models inspired by the panopticon, guides for running the prison, etc., and b) would be transcripts from the prisoners and maybe even the guards.)
  
  But these lectures are primarily about how a new type of history is created. A new type of history that eventually turns into the idea of "class struggle." Foucualt traces this history back to an early notion of "race struggle" (more on that in a sec') and on the invention of an idea that "war is behind all social interactions" (more, on that too, in a bit).
  
  "Race struggle": Roughly Foucault claims that a new form of history arises in the 17th c. Before then (again, roughly) history was all about following and codifying the lineage of power ("history is about kings;" "history is written by the winners"). In the 17th c. a new type of history emerges which is from the point of view of the conquered. It's a struggle of "racial history" since this new narrative focuses on the conquered or disposed race. (For example, the 17th c. saw the rise of the history of the Saxons as opposed to the history of the Normans. The Norman history was the dominant history; the history of power coming from William the Conquerer, a Norman. The Saxons were establishing a counter history; their history of the "rightful winners." They were using The Bible as a model, which provided a model for a history of the oppressed.) Then this new type of history moves to France and mutates into a more complex story of different strands of histories, of different histories for various races, and then eventually turns into a history for types of people. Eventually, there is a history for the depowered nobility, another history for the new and newly powerful bourgeoisie, and finally, a history of "the people." The move to The People allows the shift from "racial struggle" to "class struggle."
  
  As you can imagine, his "race struggle" model of history is appropriated by the State, which results in State racism, which is prescient and relevant for us today. Roughly, the State turns the historical narrative into a struggle against "enemies from within" as well as "enemies from without." And it uses those struggles in order to keep its people in-line.
  
  Then there's the new idea of "war is behind all interactions." It's not Hobbes' war of all against all, but an idea that war and struggle underpins all individual groups and nations, and that each group is struggling for power and domination. Again, this is prescient and relevant for us today. (One quick note is that this idea undermines the older idea of Truth and replaces it with a distrust of dominant narratives, which results in a cynical fracturing and a tough relationship to the idea of a common struggle. You see this in both Fox News and in far left academia. Anyway, it's more complicated than that, but still, you get some of the idea.)
  
  There's way more to the book. It's packed full of ideas and asides that are spellbinding and intriguing. The whole book is filled with gems, and the very end starts to talk about "biopower" which is the topic of another series of lectures (roughly, how the state uses surveillance to control its populace).
  
  Last, my friend and roommate asked me, "Why read Foucault when you love Deleuze so much? I mean, it seems a little... less involved." And I told her that I prefer Foucault and Bourdieu. I like the way they approach things "on the ground." I like the way they constantly bring back their studies to today. I like the way I can use their work to think about the world around me, and I like the way they provide me with tools for living. Deleuze is really, for me, about questioning the way I approach the world, and it's not deeper, but it is more dense and a little harder to apply or to turn is ideas into tools I can use. In the end, I guess I'm a typical U.S. pragmatist, and I want results and apparatus to apply, and am not as interested in theories for the sake of theories. When it comes to theory, I want tools. Foucault gives me that.
• 
  أحمد أبازيد Ahmad Abazed

  
  
  "
  ماذا كان يقول هذا الخطاب (التاريخي-السياسي المقابل للخطاب الفلسفي-القانوني) ؟
  
  أعتقد أنه كان يقول عكس ما تقول به النظرية الفلسفية-القانونية والتشريعية, وهو أنه لا تبدأ السلطة عندما تنتهي الحرب أو عندما تتوقف الحرب, وأن التنظيم والبنية التشريعية للسلطة والدولة والممالك والمجتمعات, ليس لها هذا المبدأ الذي يظهر عندما يتوقف ضجيج الأسلحة, الحرب ليست مؤامرة, بل "قابلة" أشرفت على مولد الدول والقانون والسلم والتشريعات , فلقد ولد القانون من الدم ووحل المعارك, ولا يجب أن نفهم من هذا أنها كانت معارك مثالية, ومناقشات كما يتحيلها أو يتصورها الفلاسفة و الفقهاء أو المشرعون, فلا يتعلق الأمر هنا بنوع من الوحشية الفكرية أو النظرية.
  لا يولد القانون من الطبيعة, ولا عند المنابع الأولى التي يرتادها أول الرعاة, وإنما يولد القانون في خضم المعارك الواقعية والحقيقية, إنه يولد من الانتصارات والمجازر, ومن الغزوات التي لها تاريخها وأبطالها المرعبون, يولد القانون من المدن المدمرة والأراضي المحترقة , يولد مع الأبرياء المشهورين الذين يحتضرون عندما يطلع النهار.
  
  لكن هذا لا يعني أن المجتمع والقانون الودولة ليس إلا هدنة في هذه الحروب, أو العقاب النهائي لهذه الحروب, القانون ليس نوعاً من المسالمة أو التعايش, لأنه حتى في ظل القانون تستمر الحرب في عملها المرعب داخل كل آليات السلطة, حتى الآليات الأكثر انتظاماً.
  الحرب هي محرك المؤسسات والنظام, ويقوم السلم حتى في أصغر محطاته على الحرب, بتعبير آخر يجب تحليل الحرب في السلم, الحرب هي الوجه الآخر للسلم.
  نحن إذن في حرب والواحد منا ضد الآخر, معركة تخترق المجتمع في مجمله, معركة مستمرة ودائمة, وهذه المعركة تضع كل واحد منا في جهة معينة. فلس هنالك طرف محايد, نحن بالقوة خصم لشخص من الأشخاص.
  "
• 
  Casey James

  "Politics is war by other means". Foucault attempts to see if the concept of "war" can be used to analyze of power relations. He argues that the juridical theory of sovereignty masks the war going on between conflicting forces, groups, classes, races, religions, etc and explores how people began to see the history of power as being a history of war. He uses the history of France written by Boulainvilliers for much of this and locates the birth of the discourse of social war (and even class struggle) in the race struggle. Historical discourse is a tool; a weapon in the political fight to justify right. The monarchy created a history where they were those with the right to rule because of former conquests they inherited. The bourgeoisie tried to create an argument surrounding natural rights (think Rousseau), while the nobility (Boulainvilliers and the like) used the lens of race struggle and war to say that the governance of the invaders, the "social peace" that they maintain is just an order of battle. The bourgeoisie found this most difficult and is why they ignored historical discourse for so long. They had to rework the notion of the "nation" in order to make a new historical discourse possible.
  
  Later, MF briefly talks about the shift in power that occurred between the old days (classical juridical theory of sovereignty) and the 19th century (biopolitics), when power over human's biological life came under state control. The old way was the right of the sword: The right of sovereignty was to put people to death or allow them to live. The new right established the right to make life and let die. Some of the techniques of power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that centered on the body were spacial separation, surveillance of bodies, attempts to increase productive force through exercise and drill, etc. Ways of rationalizing power and making it more efficient and economical were seen in a system of surveillance, hierarchies, bookkeeping, reports, inspections, etc. These are all disciplinary technologies of labor. In the second half of the 18th century, a new technology of power (that is non-disciplinary) modifies the previous disciplinary form. Instead of applying it directly to bodies (displinary: human-as-body), it is applied to humans-as-species, to the human-as-living-being. It is addressed to the mass of humans, whom are affected by the characteristics of birth, death, illness, production, etc. Illness affected the population's strength and productivity and costed money. The end of the 18th century is seen with the end of the "anatamo-politics of the human body, and instead the biopolitics of the human species".
  
  At the end, MF wraps up a lot of points addressed in the book in a discussion about state racism, biopolitics and nazism. "The most murderous states are also, of necessity, the most racist" (258). He says that if normalizing biopolitical regimes wish to exercise the old sovereign right to kill it must become racist (both direct murder and indirect murder: exposing a certain group to death, increasing the risk of death for some people). This new racism modeled on war was "required because a biopower that wanted to wage war had to articulate the will to destroy the adversary with the risk that it might kill those whose lives it had, by definition, to protect manage and multiply" (258). Racism justifies the "death-funciton" in the economy of biopower by appealing to the principle that others dying makes you biologically stronger in that one is an element of a different biological population competing for resources. In addition, as more and more of one group's number dies, the race to which it belongs will become purer.
  
  Considering all of this, it is easy to see that Nazi Germany and their scientifically calculated genocide is less of an aberration and more of a logical manifestation of modernity and the age of biopower.
  
• 
  sologdin

  A decent place to make a run at Foucault, this one is by far his most accessible.
  
  Basic object of the lecture series is his "inversion of Clausewitz," i.e., the thesis that politics is the continuation of warfare by other means. I suppose the question would accordingly be whether warfare, or technique derived from warfare, is the basic engine of history, or, at least the presentation or reactivation of history.
  
  There is very little discussion of military doctrine or military history--more significant by far is how the concept of "race war" (as distinguished from "racism" or "racist war") is a "grid of intelligibility" for historical knowledge, particularly how historical knowledge is produced and deployed in political struggle (e.g., as in the case of the "nobiliary reaction," as produced by M. Boulainvilliers--a fascinating description that covers several lectures, and is critical to a genealogy of rightwing "thought," if that is the correct term).
  
  There's a slick reading of Hobbes, by the bye, as well as erudite commentary on Marat, and plenty of tormented critique of the ancient doctrine of sovereignty, as well as a working through the obsession with Rome (and probably becoming obsessed while doing so).
  
  There's plenty of other useful bits thrown in along the way, via digression, but the lectures hold course against the main object, which is investigated from the 17th century through Stalinism. (The last lecture ends with some fairly amazing, if brief, commentary about the Third Reich and the Soviet Union--but, as always, he's less interested in the extremes for their own sake than for what they have in common with, and therefore how they shed light upon. the norms of his own society.)
  
  This main line of inquiry carries the notion of "race war" through the development of the notion of "nation" to its terminus in the concept of "class," and, of course, "class struggle," which should be familiar enough. Incidentally, it's not an anti-marxist writing by any stretch, but it does have much critical commentary about socialism in general, from which marxism is only partially excepted.
  
  Recommended.
• 
  Ahmed Ibrahim

  Dans ces cours, foucault a essayé de finir ce qu'il a commancé dans des autres livres, ou en d'autres termes, il a développé son traitement de certaines mécanismes de pouvoir, les rapports de force, le pouvoir diciplinaire et régulariser qu'il a traité dans des autres livres (surveiller et punir, Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique, etc).
  
  Foucault a tenté d'observer la transformation du discours philosophico-juridique au discous historico-politique, qui s'est développé à partir du XVIIIe au XXe siècle.
  Il a renversé le dicton de Clausewitz "la guerre est une simple continuation de la politique par d’autres moyens", en "la politique, c’est la guerre continuée par d’autres moyens". Il utilise la guerre comme principe historique de fonctionnement du pouvoir politique et tente de repérer les rapports de force à l’intérieur de la société.
  Ces cours ont été consacré à l’apparition de cette forme d’analyse :
  comment la guerre (et ses différents aspects, invasion, bataille, conquête, victoire, rapports des vainqueurs aux vaincus, pillage et appropriation, soulèvements) a-t-elle été utilisée comme un analyseur de l’histoire et, d’une façon générale, des rapports sociaux? Foucault se concentre principalement sur la lutte que la discours historico-politique s'est prouduit comme une lutte des races (pas de lutte des classe, pas d'autre chose), et il se termine par son analyse de la genèse du racisme d'État (la nazisme spécialement).
  
  Vous pouvez écouter les cours sur YouTube ici:
  il faut défendre la société
• 
  Jacques le fataliste et son maître

  In questo corso tenuto da Foucault al Collège de France nel 1976 si trova una stimolante disamina di teorie storiche e di analisi sociali formulate nel corso del Seicento, Settecento ecc. in Inghilterra e Francia. Di ognuno di questi discorsi storici è svelata la funzionalità rispetto ai concreti interessi politici del pensatore che l’ha enunciato.

  Riporto alcuni brani, credo chiarificatori, dal riassunto del corso preparato dallo stesso Foucault.
  «A partire da quando, e come, si è cominciato a immaginare che fosse la guerra a funzionare all’interno delle relazioni di potere, che una lotta ininterrotta travagliasse la pace, che l’ordine civile fosse fondamentalmente un ordine di battaglia? […] Chi ha cercato, nel clamore e nella confusione della guerra, nel fango delle battaglie, il principio di intelligibilità dell’ordine, delle istituzioni e della storia? Chi, per primo, ha pensato che la politica non fosse che la guerra continuata con altri mezzi? […] Si è formato un discorso sui rapporti tra la società e la guerra. Un discorso storico-politico (assai diverso dal discorso filosofico-giuridico organizzato intorno al problema della sovranità) che fa della guerra il sostrato permanente di tutte le istituzioni di potere. […] È la guerra ad avere presieduto alla nascita degli Stati. Ma non una guerra ideale (quella che immaginavano i filosofi dello stato di natura), bensì guerre reali e battaglie effettive. […] Il soggetto che parla in questo discorso non può occupare la posizione del giurista o del filosofo, vale a dire la posizione del soggetto universale. All’interno della lotta generale di cui parla, egli è necessariamente situato da una parte o dall’altra: è nella battaglia, ha degli avversari, si batte per ottenere una vittoria. Cerca senza dubbio di far valere il diritto; ma è del suo diritto che si tratta – di un diritto personale, marcato da un rapporto di conquista, di dominazione, o di anzianità: diritti della razza, diritti delle invasioni trionfanti o delle occupazioni millenarie. E se anche parla della verità, sarà di quella verità prospettiva e strategica che gli permette di riportare la vittoria. […] Si tratta di far valere una verità che funzioni come un’arma. Per il soggetto che tiene un simile discorso, la verità universale e il diritto generale sono illusioni o trappole. […] All’origine della storia e del diritto si farà valere una serie di fatti bruti (vigore fisico, forza, carattere), una serie di casi (sconfitte, vittorie, successi o insuccessi delle congiure, delle rivolte o delle alleanze). Ed è solamente al di sopra di questo groviglio che potrà delinearsi una razionalità crescente, quella dei calcoli e delle strategie – una razionalità che, mano a mano che si sale e che essa si sviluppa, diviene sempre più fragile, sempre più malvagia, sempre più legata all’illusione, alla chimera, alla mistificazione.»

  Di estremo interesse l’ultima parte del corso, dove viene delineata la nozione di «biopolitica». Il controllo dell’autorità sugli esseri umani si evolve dal classico diritto di vita e di morte sui singoli all’addestramento e alla disciplina dei loro corpi, allo studio e alla regolazione dell’uomo-specie (in relazione a natalità, morbilità, influenze dell’ambiente sulla popolazione ecc.): è questa la biopolitica della specie umana, «una tecnologia incentrata non sul corpo, ma sulla vita; si tratta di una tecnologia che raccoglie gli effetti di massa propri a una specifica popolazione e cerca di controllare la serie degli avvenimenti aleatori che possono prodursi all’interno di una massa vivente. Si tratta inoltre di una tecnologia che cerca di controllarne, e eventualmente di modificarne, la probabilità, e in ogni caso di compensarne gli effetti. Per mezzo dell’equilibrio globale, piuttosto che attraverso l’addestramento individuale, tale tecnologia ha di mira qualcosa come un’omeostasi: la sicurezza dell’insieme in relazione ai suoi pericoli interni».
  Sempre nell’ultima parte si trovano interessanti riflessioni in merito al rapporto fra biopolitica e morte (che «diventerà il momento in cui l’individuo sfugge a ogni potere, ricade su se stesso e si rifugia in qualche modo nella sua parte più privata»), sessualità («nella misura in cui la sessualità si trova all’origine delle malattie individuali e dato che costituisce, d’altro canto, il nucleo delle degenerazione, rappresenterà esattamente il punto d’articolazione del disciplinare e del regolatore, del corpo e della popolazione») e razzismo (che «assicura […] grosso modo la funzione della morte nell’economia del bio-potere, sulla base del principio che la morte degli altri equivale al rafforzamento biologico di se stessi in quanto membri di una razza o di una popolazione, in quanto elementi all’interno di una pluralità unitaria e vivente»).

  (Peccato che l’edizione italiana contenga qualche refuso di troppo…)
• 
  Scribe

  Foucault is always hard to get into, but once you eventually get a grip of the assumptions and definitions he comes in with, the ideas he presents and the stories he describes are mindblowing. I borrowed this from the local library and read it over a couple of months - but have now ordered my own copy.
  
  There is a loose agenda in this series of lectures, but it's not always very precisely defined, coherent, or entirely thoroughly backed up. But what Foucault does well - as in Discipline and Punish - is use history to shed light on certain movements today. Perhaps this is how history should have been taught at school.
  
  In these lectures, Foucault addresses the link between war and politics - is either an extension of the other, but through different means? In asking the question, he delves into the history of power struggles in France, England and Europe over the last 800 years or so, and traces the use of stories and knowledge through this time to show how the balance of power has changed.
  
  In short, a fascinating read - and one that asks many more questions than it does provide answers, especially as the lectures are now 35 years old, and working out how they apply to modern politics and technology is a challenge in itself. I wanted my own copy to delve into these questions more, as I'd probably rack up dozens of fines if I had to keep getting this out of the library.
• 
  Malola

  4,5 stars. "Politics is the continuation of warfare by other means."
  Bastante interesante análisis de las relaciones de poder y cómo se usa a la ciencia y a las instituciones académicas para afianzar dichas relaciones. Buen punto ése de la filología, economía política, biología (nacionalidades, clases y razas/hablar, trabajar, vivir) se usan como métodos de control.
  Todo totalitarismo es racista.
  El estilo del libro no me gustó mucho, pero hasta donde entiendo éste es más sencillo (asequible para los pobres mortales) que sus libros académicos como tales.
  Claramente se trata de un hombre muy brillante.
  
  
• 
  Tosh

  A series of lectures that Foucault gave at the College de France, which ironically enough I am right by that location. Beautiful spot I might add. Here he examines power through a historical perspective. One of the reasons why I like this book is that i get a visual picture of the man in front of an audience by reading this book. It's like a movie for the mind.
• 
  Yomna Hisham

  تحدث فوكو عن تحليل السلطة وبشكل اخص آليات السلطة عن طريق البحث فى طرق الهيمنة وعلاقات القوى من خلال الخطاب التاريخى/السياسى هذا الخطاب الذى جعل من الحرب الأساس الدائم لكل مؤسسات السلطة والحرب التى يقصدها هنا ليست حالة الحرب التى افترضها هوبز، ليست حرب الكل ضد الكل وانما الحرب الواقعية والغزوات التى تشكلت القوانين من خلالها، لأنها هى الحالة القصوى التى يمكن من خلالها تعرية علاقات القوى وتحليلها، وهنا كنا بصدد الحديث عن قلب مأثور كلوزفيتس حيث تصبح السياسة هى استمرار للحرب بوسائل اخرى، تحدث أيضا عن الهيمنه من خلال مستويين متداخلين ومتقاطعين ألا وهم السلطة الانضباطية حيث تطويع الأجساد بهدف استخراج اكبر قدر من القدرات منها ثم السلطة الحيوية التى لم تلغى الاولى ولكن عدلتها واضافت عليها، وبذلك يصبح لدينا المجتمع المعيارى الذى يتمفصل عموديا بين معيار الانضباط ومعيار التنظيم
• 
  J

  Man the first half was so good but everytime I pick this up again I find I'm on the nonsensical and evil "race war" chapter and I .. I can't do it
• 
  Magnus Palmstierna

  An interesting perspective on the nature of conflict between nations, states and their people, and the continuous use of implicit force by ruling groups against the common people. A bit difficult to follow sometimes, but overall very insightful.
• 
  Armin

  در فهم بیش‌تر و بهتر سازمان قدرت و آن‌چه در جامعه ایرانی جمهوری اسلامی بر آن سوار شده تا قدرت خود را تثبیت کند، بی اندازه کمکم کرد.
• 
  Anna

  I read 'Society Must Be Defended' on four different trains and in three different stations. It's a good book for a long journey, as it turns out. I hadn't previously read any Foucault, but I'd heard that he writes/lectures engagingly. That's certainly what I found; compared to some other political theorists (I'm looking at you, Žižek) his writing is clear and fluid. 'Society Must Be Defended' is a transcription of a series of lectures that Foucault gave in 1976. Amusingly, the lectures were so popular that Foucault found the crowds frustrating and therefore moved them to 9:30am. This was intended to put off students and, as a stereotypically morning-allergic postgraduate, I can only assume that it worked. Luckily, of those that attended the lectures, some recorded them for posterity.
  
  The lectures cover a lot of ground, so I'll pick out a few things that especially interested me. Firstly, I liked the notion of the Enlightenment not as a flowering of new knowledge, so much as systematisation of scattered and heterogeneous knowledge into a structure of academic disciplines. Foucault is very fond of the idea of discipline and applies it frequently. I was especially struck by the image of the model industrial town (subject of my undergraduate dissertation) using the built environment as a disciplinary mechanism.
  
  Foucault's description of the nature of power was also new to me and I really liked it. According to the 'Situating the Lectures' afterword, he never settled on one single definition of power, revising his understanding constantly during his researches. Within these lectures, however, he seems to be using energy as an allegory for power. Power is described as 'something that circulates [...] part of a chain', see also 'Power is something that passes through individuals. It is not applied to them.' I find this formulation more subtle and effective than others I've come across, which tend to treat power as a sort of blunt instrument applied by one group to another.
  
  A third element that appealed was the discussion of how death has gone from being a public, ritualised event to a private, hidden taboo. Foucault suggests that this is because death used to be a transition from one sovereign power to another, from a monarch to god. This is no longer the case, since sovereign power (in the living world) has shifted from allowing life and granting death to granting life (through public health interventions) and allowing death. This is a very intriguing point.
  
  Quite a bit of the book focuses on the nature of history and how it has been told. This is interesting, but less viscerally fascinating to me. The history of racism and how states use it is however very striking. Foucault ends his lectures with the question of how socialism can avoid becoming racist as, he admits, socialist regimes have all been to a greater or lesser extent. His formulation of racism, as the emphasis on a lesser class that compete with a greater one for resources, is still powerful today. Strong echoes of this can be discerned in today's UK government rhetoric about 'benefit scroungers' vs 'strivers'. Such rhetoric implies that the former are damaging to the latter and must be eradicated for society to thrive. This is a horrible and divisive narrative. Foucault suggests that racism persists in this way because political regimes fail to re-evaluate the state mechanisms, such as public health and welfare, that began in the eighteenth century. As these mechanisms began on a racist basis, they cannot leave it behind.
  
  The final, brief point of Foucault's that will stick with me is the idea of Homo Economicus, the absolutely rational, perfectly informed and self-interested myth figure, as savage. As Foucault points out, such an entirely self-interested figure is antithetical to society and recalls instead Hobbes' model of humans pre-society. Although as a noun the term 'savage' has been consistently used in a racist manner, in the form of an adjective it's interesting to apply to the free market economic understanding of human behaviour. Indeed, it occurred to me whilst reading this that Homo Economicus is essentially a psychopath. The characteristics of psychopathy overlap quite neatly with the assumptions of Homo Economicus, for example 'stress immunity' = risk neutrality, 'Machiavellian egocentricity' = personal utility maximisation, 'blame externalization' = lack of consideration of social costs and spillover effects, 'rebellious nonconformity' = total independence from others' decisions and utility functions. (I got these specific characteristics from the wikipedia article on psychopathy.) What does this say about economics as a discipline, I wonder?
  
  To sum up, 'Society Must Be Defended' is an ideal travel companion, together with a pair of noise-blocking headphones in case of loud children on the train. I found it very thought-provoking and an excellent introduction to Foucault. I'm definitely planning to read more of his work.
• 
  Rizgar Haji

  هذا الكتاب هو عبارة عن دروس ميشيل فوكو التي ألقاها في "الكوليج دي فرانس" في السنوات 1971-1984.يتساءل فوكو في هذه الدراسة عن مُلاءمة نموذج الحرب لتحليل علاقات السلطة، وحدّد السلطة بشكلين: السلطة الانضباطية التي تُطبّق على الجسد بواسطة تقنيات الرقابة ومؤسسات العقاب؛ والسلطة الحيوية التي تُمارس على السكان والحياة والأحياء. وبتحليله لخطاباتٍ حول حرب الأعراق والغزو والاجتياح، بيّن ميشيل فوكو "جينيالوجيا السلطة الحيوية" و"عنصرية الدولة الحديثة"، وأكد أن منطق العلاقة بين السلطة والمقاومة ليس هو منطق القانون، بل منطق الصراع: إنه لا ينتمي إلى نظام القانون وإنما إلى نظام الاستراتيجية. وعليه، فإن السؤال الذي يطرح نفسه هو: هل من المناسب قلب مأثور كلوزفيتز، والقول "إن السياسة هي استمرار للحرب بوسائل أخرى"؟.
• 
  امیرمحمد حیدری

  «باید از جامعه دفاع کرد» دومین (اگر اشتباه نکنم) مجلد از مجموعه درس‌گفتارهای فوکو در کلژ دوفرانس است. او در این جلسات (که سخنانش به‌شکل مکتوب درآمده‌اند) حاصل پژوهش‌های سالانه‌ی خود را طی جلسه‌ای ده‌ساعته به دانشجویان، اساتید و علاقه‌مندان ارائه می‌دهد. فوکو که اندیشمند سیاسیِ پرکاری‌ست، در این مجموعه به مضامین بسیار زیادی اشاره می‌کند و تقریباً می‌توان ادعا کرد که مسیر پژوهش‌های او جهان‌شمول‌اند و سعی در پوشش تمامی ابعاد جامعه‌شناسانه دارند. مهم‌ترین نکته، نگاه فلسفی-روانشناختی فوکوست که با دیدگاه‌های سیاسی-جامعه‌شناسی او ادغام شده‌اند.
• 
  Franti

  "Society must be defended" is a shining example of how a philosophical essai can be entertaining while being thougt-provoking. I would add that the sheer quantity of concepts for which Foucault proposes a critical perspective, is itself entertaining. If it exists a downside to this book is its capability to excite the reader's braincells and push him/her out of focus and into endless personal speculations about contemporary society.
  Foucault reverses the Clausewitzian notion of "War as continuation of politics through other means" and unfolds a plethora of reflections (on the micro-mechanisms of power, the underlying conflict that is inherent to society and to the concept of domination) that have not lost their strength as tools to build a critical perspective of contemporary society.
  
  This book is surprisingly a pageturner and whether you end up reading it for your dissertation (as I did) or just for fun or curiosity, you won't be disappointed. Finally, not only Foucault is THE name to drop when you want to brag, but also if you actually read it you will find easier to develop a different perspective on generally accepted knowledge and even more importantly the style of Foucauldian analysis is fundamental to overcome your own interpretative biases.
  
  Foucault will teach you stuff..but he will also teach you to think about stuff
• 
  Clare

  "Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed." ~Mao Zedong
  
  Starting with the the idea of history and the narratives of different perspectives in power, Foucault has advanced that idea from the juridical to the disciplinary. The disciplinary regime is there to administer knowledge and the effects of that knowledge, in essence, different groups can trot out different narratives/histories as the truth. This truth becomes what is known and in itself contains the power as in the old cliché knowledge is power. The administration of truth has been transformed and understood in recent centuries as the reproduction of the individual and inherently the body. Once understood as the administration of bodies, Foucault advances that notion to a more macro level or to the level of population. The control of the population through juridical and disciplinary functions, through not anymore the destruction of life only but the making or letting of life as the bio-political mode of power. Society Must Be Defended is the turning point in which Foucault starts to articulate the concept of bio-power.
• 
  Rachel

  For most of the book I was slogging. I mean once in a while there'd be a really cool idea, but then I'd realize it was in the context of a debate about whether it was the aristocracy or the bourgeoise who had "invented history" and I would be like Really, this is how I'm spending my time? But the very last lecture finally emerged from medieval France and got into biopolitics and socialism and whatnot and suddenly I understood all the references and just as suddenly and perhaps not coincidentally every paragraph seemed totally brilliant. So perhaps I just didn't have the background knowledge needed to appreciate all the brilliant ideas that were illustrated by episodes from Charlemagne's era. I don't know.
• 
  David McGrogan

  This is probably the deepest and strangest work of political philosophy of the last 50 years, which defies all attempts at summary. Whether discussing Hobbes, Charlemagne, or Hitler, Foucault never fails to offer a perspective that is completely original. What I haven't noticed being mentioned by other reviewers, though, is how good a read these lectures are - of all the collected volumes of his lectures, I find these by far the most enjoyable and entertaining: listening to him in full flow in 1975-76 must really have been something.
• 
  Joshua Garrett

  I cannot say that I "get" everything that Foucault is discussing, but I love the way that my mind is prevented from setting up camp in well worn thought grooves by his provocation. I appreciate the challenge and embrace the new found perspectives. My only critique of the book/lectures is that he focuses almost exclusively on English and French historical/counter historical discourse. I would love to see these ideas applied more broadly both culturally and historically.
• 
  Katarzyna Bartoszynska

  I dunno man. I think I'm just over Foucault. It just seems like the same old thing, over and over, and it's all so scattered and impressionistic and descriptive that it's not even convincing to me anymore.
• 
  Patrick Devitt

  Violence and the Law (Summer 2018) at The New School
• 
  Rinin

  4 Words:
  War!
  daring
  historizise
  Theory-Shift
• 
  Floris

  I'm not much of a Foucault reader, and I don't have any plans to start becoming one any time soon, but I was recommended Society Must Be Defended as the book to read if I was only going to read one. Having finished it I can probably recommend it to others for exactly the same reason. By virtue of essentially being an annotated transcription of his in-person lectures delivered in early-1976, the whole work feels quite conversational and easier to digest. It's well-edited, and comes bookended with two helpful introductory and contextual essays. You still get some of the typically dense scholarly writing you might find in any other academic text, but each chapter is very well signposted and clearly structured (even accounting for his small tangents). Representing a turning point in Foucault's scholarship, it is also useful in giving the reader a good summary of his main research foci of the 1970s.
  
  I found the first and last few chapters of the work the most useful. They include helpful outlines of his previous research (1971-1976) into power and discipline, and his 'future' (1976-1980) research into historicism, war, biopolitics, etc. Chapter 2 in particular gives a great impression of his methodology. Chapter 3 defines what he means by the "(Philosophico-Juridicial) discourse" and how it shifted in the 17th and 18th to focus more on individual rights (a more "racist" discourse - a term he spends most of the book defining). This sets up his analysis - mainly of 17th/18th century French writers, and mainly Henri de Boulainvilliers - of history-writing and war as the analytical lens for understanding history and politics. These middle chapters on Boulainvilliers and French origin stories I found much less gripping to read. Beyond France he only expands a bit to early modern Britain, especially its revolutionary and colonial periods.
  
  The final chapter I found much more readable. It provides an overview of Biopolitics, State racism, sovereignty over life and death, and how the Nazi State embodied (institutionalised) Biopower in a dictatorship. The course summary wasn't super helpful beyond presenting some overarching questions about war as the "analyzer" of politics. The final "Situating" chapter by Alessandro Fontana and Mauro Bertani is maybe a bit too long to be considered a concise contextualisation of Foucault and his lectures in the mid-1970s, but, like the book overall, the beginning and end of it are very useful for giving insight into the lectures in the context of Foucault's scholarship.
• 
  David Ryan

  Foucault's lectures were difficult reading but I do recommend it to those seeking to increase their depth of understanding and awareness around the concept of "Power".
  
  There were so many ideas to explore that it would be a long read to even try to delve into any depth but below are some of the topics that I found of great interest. In general, my interest in Foucault is examining the topics below through the lens of societal relationships between Power (that subjugates and conducts war), Right (that controls the narrative and societal obligations), and Truth (the philosophical truth derived from dialectic discourse) from the Middle Ages to today.
  
  Topics:
  - How "Origin Stories" for individuals or nations often elide history, facts, and reality
  - The 1st criterion of "Freedom" is the ability to deprive others of their freedom
  - The methods of discourse: Dialectic, Eristic, Didactic, Critique
  - How "racism" (Class, Culture, Religion, Heredity, Nationality) is used to justify "The Death Function" in the economy of biopower (i.e. the death or diminution of the "other" makes one group biologically stronger.
  - The kinship between liberal and totalitarian states
  - Racist, murderous, suicidal states (e.g. Nazism)
  - Juridicial - Philosophical discourse (Simplest, Elementary, Clear) that dominates law and order societies supporting the power structure, has its traditional values of intelligibility inverted by Political - Historical discourse (Confused, Obscure, Disorganized, Haphazard, all filtered through a lens of hatred of the other, revenge, grievance, alliances, and conspiracies)
  - The counter-history of empire and nations reveals the dazzling effect of power is but a divisive light shining on the privileged leaving all others in their shadows