Foucault on Governmentality and Population: The Impossible Discovery

Abstract

For Michel Foucault's analysis of state formation, the 'discovery of population' was the pivot on which the transition from rule based on police to rule in liberal modes of government took place. Moder 'governmentality' takes population as its object. Foucault's usages of 'population' proposition to the continually asked questions 'what's the class?,' 'where's the class?,' 'what class do you belong to?.' And the French Communist Party con- fronted all social struggles with the question, 'is this struggle in the interest of theproletariat?.' Marxists askedrepeatedly 'what's the class?' butnever 'what's the struggle?,' 'who is engaged in struggle?,' 'what is at stake in struggle?,'

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