Politics and Sovereign Power

Considerations on Foucault

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2397751
AutoresBrian C J Singer (York University, Toronto, Canada), Lorna Weir (York University, Toronto, Canada)
Ano2006
Volume9
Fascículo4
Páginas443-465
Data de publicação2006-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEuropean Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1368-4310 • E-ISSN: 1461-7137
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1368431006073013
OpenAlexW2091732348
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas24
Referências citadas32

Foucault's critique of early modern political theory aimed at displacing sovereignty as the principle of intelligibility of power. In the genealogical literature since Foucault, sovereignty has become a residual category lacking analytic specificity, largely displaced by governance, in turn equated with politics. We argue that Foucault and the Foucauldians have not understood that the flourishing of governance has presupposed a symbolic regime with a division of knowledge-power-law characteristic of the democratic sovereign. The conflation of governance with politics, together with the sliding of sovereignty under governance, has left Foucauldians unable to diagnose the dangers present in varying possible sovereignty-governance configurations

Conflation · Corporate governance · Democracy · Economics · Epistemology · Flourishing · Law and economics · Political economy · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Popular sovereignty · Power (physics) · Sociology · Sovereignty · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Law · Philosophy · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought