Saturday, June 09, 2012

About Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-1978 by Michel Foucault


Foucault lectured at the Collège de France for several semesters. This opportunity allowed him to continue and share his research, his hypotheses and conclusions. In this lecture series, Foucault traces the origin and evolution of the modern concept of government and the assemblage of techniques, collectively called security, it uses in managing the population. Foucault shows that the question of how the sovereign should rule the territory and its inhabitants became a question of what technique of leadership would do given the new phenomenon called "population.

I first read this in March 2012 but am returning to it now to take notes while I read. This edition (and others in the series) is awesome because the editors include valuable additions of their own, Foucault's notes, and material from the Collège.