Foucault

Question 1

Biopolitics:

Answer 1

the endeavour, begun in the 18th century, to rationalise the problems presented to governmental practice by the phenomena characteristic of a group of living human beings constituted as a population: health, sanitation, birthrate, longevity, race…

Fou.e.73

Question 2

“Liberalism” enters the picture …

Answer 2

because it is in connection with liberalism that they began to have the look of a challenge. In a system anxious to have the respect of legal subjects and to ensure the free enterprise of individuals, how can the “population” phenomenon, with its specific effects and problems, be taken into account? On behalf of what, and according to what rules, can it be managed?

Fou.e.73 - substance of ethics - to determine a ‘right’, justified, legal approach, consistent with the nature of its subjects.

Question 3

Liberalism is to be analysed …

Answer 3

then, as a principle and a method of rationalising the exercise of government, a rationalisation that obeys - and this is its specificity - the internal rule of maximum economy.

Fou.e.74

Question 4

Government depends on (…)

Answer 4

a positive knowledge of the domain to be governed, a way of rendering it into thought, so that is can be analysed, evaluated, its ills diagnosed and remedies prescribed. Such ‘representation’ has two significant aspects: the articulation of languages to describe the objects of government and the invention of devices to inscribe it.

Ros.70

Question 5

Only through language can …

Answer 5

the ends of government be formulated, by portraying their objects as an intelligible field with identifiable limits within which certain characteristics are linked in a systematic manner.

Ros.70