The Government of Life Foucault, Biopolitics, and Neoliberalism [Hardcover]

Foucaults late work on biopolitics and governmentality has established him as the fundamental thinker of contemporary continental political thought and as a privileged source for our current understanding of neoliberalism and its technologies of power. In this volume, an international and interdisciplinary group of Foucault scholars examines his ideas of biopower and biopolitics and their relation to his project of a history of governmentality and to a theory of the subject found in his last courses at the College de France.

Many of the chapters engage critically with the Italian theoretical reception of Foucault. At the same time, the originality of this collection consists in the variety of perspectives and traditions of reception brought to bear upon the problematic connections between biopolitics and governmentality established by Foucaults last works.

We are facing an explosion of research on biopolitical questions today, and this volume certainly represents a welcome addition to this growing literature.An extraordinarily incisive and comprehensive collection of essays by an internationally distinguished list of contributors, Foucault, Biopolitics and Neoliberalism brilliantly discloses how Foucaults thinking continues to challenge and provoke 30 years after his death. No memorializing of Foucault, these essays think with and against his work in a spirit of critical engagement which could provide no better tribute to him.The Government of Life reminds us of how prescient Foucault was. We have so few guides in our present age of unbridled neoliberalism and biopolitics; Foucault was one of the few who saw what was coming. The authors in this volume richly plumb Foucault's work in order to make sense of our predicament, to recuperate from the maw of biopolitics a more affirmative way of life. These authors speak to one another and to Foucault through a focus on common texts. In doing so they engage in critical questions about sovereignty, bodies andlS†