Description
This lecture recounts my long-term engagement with the framework of governmentality. In it, I found that the classical governmentality framework of Foucault and his immediate followers left open key questions of its characterization of liberalism, its relevance to authoritarian practices and rule, the persistence of sovereignty, and the genealogy of contemporary government. Needless to say, such questions are fundamental to political challenges today thematised around populism and the hollowing out of liberal-democracy. Eschewing the impulse to add another diagnosis of this present, I argue that we should return to the basic task of developing an analytical framework to understand the exercise of power in our societies that emphasizes the fundamental relation between economic-managerial forms of governance and juridical-institutional forms of sovereignty. What emerges are questions not only of conduct but also of order, glory, and the practical capacities of states, themes emphasized by often disavowed thinkers such as Hayek, Agamben, and Schmitt, and the frequently misapprehended disciplines of political-economic theology.| Period | 27 Nov 2023 |
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| Held at | King's College London, United Kingdom |