From: Craig McFarlane <cmcfarla-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: Re: war
Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 20:18:38 -0400


It might be more fruitful to consider how the model of war (which 
decreases in overt importance in published works following HS vol 1) 
relates to the concept of agonism.  Whereas war is a zero-sum strategy 
(there are winners and there are losers), agonism has a more positive 
outcome (look to the Olympics -- gold, silver and bronze).  
Nonetheless, the strategies inherent to agonism are nonetheless 
warlike.  I suspect there is a lot more to Foucault's claim about 
inverting Clausewitz than he lets on in SMBD -- especially the clash of 
forces.

Stuart is absolutely correct that war, for Foucault, is not merely 
killing each other, but is rather a model for analyzing social 
relations as a whole -- especially the forms of relations prevalent in 
biopolitical societies.

Could someone confirm that "analytic of power" is not a translation of 
"analytique du pouvoir"?  I don't have access to a French copy of SMBD, 
but a referee who recently read a friend's paper commented that there 
is no such thing as an "analytique du pouvoir" in French or in 
Foucault.

cm.


On 26-Aug-04, at 3:56 AM, Stuart Elden wrote:

> Lots of questions recently
>
>> is it feasible to say, yes or no, that, following the publication of 
>> The
> History of Sexuality Vol. 1, Foucault rejected the military model of
> discipline and the war model of power; that, in short, he rejected the
> "Nietzschean hypothesis"?
>
> yes or no? - no!
>
> If we're allowed a more nuanced answer, I'd suggest that looking at 
> the new lecture courses will be revealing in terms of a continuity of 
> concerns and yet a continual willingness to question and modify 
> positions. I suppose it's worth asking why Foucault thought war and 
> the military was revealing as a model both in Discipline and Punish 
> (and Le pouvoir psychiatrique) and 'Society Must Be Defended'. It's 
> not just to explain the military of course, but society in a wider 
> sense. 'Society Must Be Defended' is related to a planned volume of 
> the History of Sexuality on race and population.  The concern with the 
> conduct of conduct, government of others and from there to government 
> of the self, shows how these themes link into each other. Nietzsche 
> continues to play a major role. Foucault talks about spending the next 
> few courses on war and strategy in 1976, and although that is not kept 
> to, I don't think it is entirely abandoned. As your interviews 
> suggest, perhaps he would have retu
>  rned to this, after the long detours of his research.
>
> On noso-politics or nosology, see Birth of the Clinic and some of the 
> later chapters of Madness and Civilisation (although not sure if the 
> relevant bits are in the translation, it's around Pinel). Politics of 
> Health in the 18th Century is in some sense a reworking of this 
> earlier material around new concepts of discipline and power, just as 
> Le pouvoir psychiatrique can be seen as revisiting, rethinking of 
> parts of the History of Madness around the same time. Politics of 
> Health is closely related to three lectures given in Rio in 1974 on 
> medicine - one of which is translated in the Power volume - and was 
> part of a collaborative project with other researches Les machines a 
> guerir [Curing machines]. This was published in 1976 and seems to me 
> to be an important context to the SMBD course. Looking at some of 
> these materials might help with your questions, but the question/idea 
> that "noso-politics [is] the medico-politics of police, whereas 
> bio-politics is the medico-politics of li
>  beral rationalities of government", and some of the other dichotomies 
> seems unlikely to me.
>
> On the question of hyphenation, I guess yes is the answer in most 
> cases. If you can give me specific examples then I can check. But 
> there was a discussion about power/knowledge vs. power-knowledge a 
> while back - check the archive.
>
> Finally, on the lecture courses, I agree with Colin that there is 
> likely to be a lot of literature over the next few years on the newly 
> published materials. There has been some on the earlier published 
> courses.
>
> best wishes
>
> Stuart
>
>
>
> Dr Stuart Elden
> Lecturer in Political Geography
> University of Durham
> Durham, DH1 3LE
> http://www.geography.dur.ac.uk/information/staff/elden.html
>
> www.foucault-studies.com
>