On the Ways of Writing the History of the State

Bibliographic Data

ID12947720
AuthorsEli B Lichtenstein (0000-0002-4735-9251, Northwestern University, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume1
Issue28
Pages71-95
Publication date2020-09-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFoucault Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1832-5203 • E-ISSN: 1832-5203
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.22439/fs.v1i28.6074
OpenAlexW3087783680
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited13

Foucault’s governmentality lectures at the Collège de France analyze the history of the state through the lens of governmental reason. However, these lectures largely omit consideration of the relationship between discipline and the state, prioritizing instead raison d’État and liberalism as dominant state technologies. To remedy this omission, I turn to Foucault’s early studies of discipline and argue that they provide materials for the reconstruction of a genealogy of the “disciplinary state.” In reconstructing this genealogy, I demonstrate that the disciplinary state marks the “dark side” of the liberal state, a dark side which is, more-over, largely obscured in the governmentality lectures. I further construe the difference be-tween this early genealogy of the state and the later governmental studies in methodologi-cal terms. At stake in this difference is the historiographic status of capitalism and social conflict. Foucault’s governmentality lectures employ what I term an “idealist disavowal,” thereby treating capitalism and social conflict as irrelevant to the history of the state. The early disciplinary studies, on the other hand, enact a “materialist avowal,” by which these objects are avowed as central to the explanation of how and why the state develops. Final-ly, I argue that Foucault’s governmental genealogy of the liberal state is explanatorily and analytically incomplete, while the genealogy of the disciplinary state contributes to its completion on both fronts

Capitalism · Discipline · Epistemology · Governmentality · Liberalism · Materialism · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Philosophy

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