Thanks Felix
I agree with many of your points here. The interview form was extensively
used by Foucault, and it enabled him to try out many of his ideas in a less
formal setting than a book/article. Some of his lecture courses demonstrate
this as well - Foucault was not adverse to showing his work in progress, and
not afraid to make mistakes and admit them.
The Herodore interview is interesting, and your recollection of it seems
pretty accurate to me. You're absolutely right about their being more
interesting comments on geography, or perhaps space more generally, in his
other writings (this was part of the logic of my book on Heidegger and
Foucault). Your point is actually about geographical _knowledge_ which is
somewhat different, but I think the point holds more generally. What I like
about his later response - the questions he asked back to the journal - is
that it both raises issues he was thinking about himself and reflects on the
earlier interview.
What you say about governmentality is also important. I have made some
comments about this in the review I wrote of Hannah's book in Political
Geography (Vol 21 No 7), and elsewhere. Basically, while I like some of the
work on the subject, far too much of it seems to tear the lecture on
governmentality out of its context, as you suggest. It's interesting just
how much has come from a single lecture of Foucault's, while the rest of
that course remains unpublished (it's apparently forthcoming from Gallimard
in the next year or so). A proper critical assessment of its place in
Foucault's development would be a significant moment in Foucault studies.
The best study I know is Thomas Lemke, Eine Kritische der politische
Vernunft - he had a piece in Economy and Society a while back which shows
the approach he takes: very textual, actually using the tapes of the lecture
courses to fill in the gaps. There are some interesting comments in Foucault
au College de France: un itineraire (ed. le Blanc & Terrel, 2003), including
a piece by Michel Sennellart, who is the editor of the Securite, Territoire,
Population and Naissance de la biopolitique courses - the two courses which
will enable us to contextualise the govermentality material best.
This post is already too long, but very briefly: not only does the
governmentality material emerge from the work on medicine in the early to
mid 1970s (notably the Politics of Health in the 18th Century piece and the
three lectures given in Rio, all part of a collaborative project on hospital
architecture and urban medicine first published in 1976), but also from
another collaborative project Politiques de l'habitat (1977), and work on
the history of sexuality. Foucault's original plan for that series included
a book on Christian notions of confession in the 15-17th Century. This led
him to look at modes of government at that time - pastoral power, etc. - in
the light of the thought that government of the self and of others were part
of the same continuum. Foucault abandoned that plan for the series, but the
issue of 'the government of self and others' occupied him for the rest of
his life - his last two courses at the College de France have this as their
title, and several other pieces make reference to these themes. Confession -
albeit in the early church rather than the late middle ages/early modern
period - is the theme of the fourth, unpublished, volume of the revised plan
of the History of Sexuality.
Happy to expand on this if there is sufficient interest
Best wishes
Stuart
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