Michael Hardt review of Foucault’s “Le gouvernement de soi et des autres, Cours au Collège de France, 1982–1983” “Le courage de la vérité: Le gouvernement de soi et des autres ii, Cours au Collège de France, 1983–1984” New Left Review #64 July-August 2010, 151-160.
The key to the shift accomplished by the Cynics is the development of the terrain of life—a militant life, a revolutionary life—as the locus of politics. Foucault needs the discovery of biopolitics, one might say, to grapple fully with politics. To understand this we must make a terminological distinction, which Foucault himself does not employ consistently, between biopower and biopolitics. Biopower, which he first theorizes in the mid-1970s, is a form of power in which the life of populations becomes the central object of rule, not only or even primarily through the destruction but also the creation of life. Foucault explores this deployment of power over life or, rather, through life in the context of sexual behaviours, medical practices, racial discourses, economic paradigms, and so forth. The militancy of the ancient Cynics, however, is clearly an entirely different politics of life. Biopolitics is the realm in which we have the freedom to make another life for ourselves, and through that life transform the world. Biopolitics is thus not only distinct from biopower but also may be the most effective weapon to combat it.