Reframing Political Freedom In The Analytics Of Governmentality

What distinguishes studies of government (gouvernamentalité) from histories of administration, historical sociologies of state formation and sociologies of governance is their power to open space for critical thought. According to Michel Foucault, studies on government are studies of a particular stratum of knowing and acting, of the emergence of particular ‘regimes of truth’ concerning the conduct of conduct, ways of speaking truths and the costs of so doing, and of the inventing and assemblage of particular apparatuses and devices for exercising power and intervening in particular problems. The key point of this paper is that in the analytics of governmentality political freedom no longer depends on the systemic logic of the balance between government and governed, but on subjects’ obstinate and wild desire to live freely and on the ethos of those who intend to govern themselves and their like autonomously, which obstructs that logic even with extreme consequences. This capacity of resistance comes from life, from the sum of its functions that are useful in resisting death and no longer from a core of subjective rights, or from the will of individuals who oppose the state or the market.

Roberto CiccarelliEmail: