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Foucault and the Modern InternationalPower as Sumbolon: Sovereignty, Governmentality and the International

Foucault and the Modern International: Power as Sumbolon: Sovereignty, Governmentality and the... [While Foucault was concerned with power throughout his entire work, it is in the 1970s that it receives his most explicit treatment. As a way of summarizing his manifold contributions to problems of the relation of sovereignty and governmentality, I propose the figure of the sumbolon, which he himself used in his lectures during that decade. This figure and its “rule of halves” prevent us from reducing his analysis of power to one of liberal or economic government. This provides us with a framework for both how the international domain is approached in these investigations and how we might remain loyally unfaithful to his approach to the international and to power more broadly. I indicate three ways we might enact this ethos: by identifying a liberal international dispositif alongside Foucault’s diplomatic-military one associated with reason of state; by the comparative investigation the question of limits and their fecundity in reason of state and liberalism, in both domestic and international domains; and by viewing sovereignty not simply as grounded in a “right of death” but as the very condition of a biopolitics.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Foucault and the Modern InternationalPower as Sumbolon: Sovereignty, Governmentality and the International

Part of the The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy Book Series
Editors: Bonditti, Philippe; Bigo, Didier; Gros, Frédéric
Dean, Mitchell
Foucault and the Modern International — Feb 8, 2017
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17 pages

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017. The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN
978-1-349-95098-0
Pages
97 –114
DOI
10.1057/978-1-137-56153-4_6
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[While Foucault was concerned with power throughout his entire work, it is in the 1970s that it receives his most explicit treatment. As a way of summarizing his manifold contributions to problems of the relation of sovereignty and governmentality, I propose the figure of the sumbolon, which he himself used in his lectures during that decade. This figure and its “rule of halves” prevent us from reducing his analysis of power to one of liberal or economic government. This provides us with a framework for both how the international domain is approached in these investigations and how we might remain loyally unfaithful to his approach to the international and to power more broadly. I indicate three ways we might enact this ethos: by identifying a liberal international dispositif alongside Foucault’s diplomatic-military one associated with reason of state; by the comparative investigation the question of limits and their fecundity in reason of state and liberalism, in both domestic and international domains; and by viewing sovereignty not simply as grounded in a “right of death” but as the very condition of a biopolitics.]

Published: Feb 8, 2017

Keywords: Civil Society; International Politics; International Governing; Global Civil Society; International Domain

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