July 22, 2006
I'm easing into my holidays and so I am winding down. Here is a quote from Foucault's Tanner Lectures on Human Values entitled 'Omnes et Singulatim: Towards a Criticism of 'Political Reason' delivered in 1979 at Standford University.
Foucault says:
Everyone knows that in European societies political power has evolved towards more and more centralised forms. Historians have been studying this organisation of the state, with its administration and bureaucracy, for dozens of years. I'd like to suggest in these two lectures the possibility of analysing another kind of transformation in such power relationships. This transformation is, perhaps, less celebrated. But I think that it is also important, mainly for modern societies. Apparently this evolution seems antagonistic to the evolution towards a centralised state. What I mean in fact is the development of power techniques oriented towards individuals and intended to rule them in a continuous and permanent way. If the state is the political form of a centralised and centralising power, let us call pastorship the individualising power.
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