Governmentality and sociolegal studies

Abstract

‘Population’ and ‘economy’ are two of the central ‘self-governing’ categories characteristic of Governmentality, whose more or less contingent emergence Michel Foucault sketches out in his germinal paper. The focus on ‘mentality’ in ‘governmentality’ immediately raises the old Marxist spectre of idealism, which for Marxists was a false mode of analysis focusing on the ‘superficial’ level of ideas rather than to the material domain. Governmental mentalities are governmental precisely in the sense that they attempt to shape the conduct of those things, events, and subjects they seek to govern. Governmentality came to the fore during the period in which Marxist theory lost favour and many critical social theorists were seeking an alternative framework. Even the idea that liberty or freedom was the aim of a progressive politics was rendered problematic because freedom itself was not one thing. Rather, governmentality saw freedom itself as always defined by some particular political program.