Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128217 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-28
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

Synopsis
This new title in the "College de France Lecture Series" charts a new development in Michel Foucault's thinking. Starting from the notion of 'bio-power' developed in the previous 1976 course, Society Must be Defended, Foucault explores the birth of the modern nation state in the Eighteenth Century through an analysis of its adminstration of institutionalized power relations, beginning with the fundamental technologies of security.

Customer Reviews

How about being in one of Foucault's lectures?
One certainly got that experience from reading the book. The lectures were reconstructed using Foucault's personal lecture notes and actual taped audio recordings of his lectures. You get a stream-of-consciousness style which works rather well, compared with Foucault's personally-written work.

The subject matter is rather more interesting than first appears. What Foucault was primarily talking about was the history of governmentality (governementalité), and the move from the medieval dynastical state to the early modern administrative state, elaborating on the relationships of power and the bodies of knowledge that were debated and formulated to allow this change.

Foucault's notions of biopower and biopolitique also loom large and the book allows you to get to grips with those concepts. Things may not be clear in the first couple of chapters (each lecture is a chapter), but as you progress towards the end of the book you will feel much better for it.

I recommend this book.