180090 SE Michel Foucault: On the Government of the Living (2023W)

Michel Foucault's Collège de France lectures The Government of the Living (1979/80) are considered an important hinge between his power-analytic reflections of the 1970s, which revolve around the notions of discipline, governmentality, and biopolitics, and the subject-analytic works of his later work, which ask about the technologies of the self and procedures of truth through which people are constituted as subjects. This is accompanied by a shift from the notion of "knowledge-power" to the notion of "government by the truth." Foucault now describes the politics of truth in a society less as a struggle for truth than as a "government of people through truth" that encompasses a complex ensemble of governmental techniques, truth acts, and practices of subjectivation. This is linked to a far-reaching change in the object and period of inquiry: while in The Birth of Biopolitics Foucault examines the rationality of German ordo and American neoliberalism, he now turns to early Christian practices of penitence and confession, which, according to Foucault's thesis, are formative for our modern understanding of truth and subjectivity.

The seminar is designed as a theory-led reading seminar. The focus is on a collaborative reading of Foucault's lectures The Government of the Living in light of the current research literature. It is aimed at students who are already acquainted with Foucault's work or are willing to engage with it. Didactic elements include - in addition to joint seminar discussion - close reading of the text, regular writing of reading reflections, and peer feedback on seminar paper concepts. A secure familiarity with the basics of scientific work and the willingness to deal intensively with demanding theoretical texts are assumed.