Synopsis
Foucault's lectures trace how modern power shifts from sovereign right to the management of populations, introducing biopolitics and the idea of politics as continued war.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workPolitics can be read as the continuation of war by other means, with power organizing society around the management and protection of life.
It reframes power as productive and population-focused rather than merely repressive, opening the study of biopolitics.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.
Reading note
Read these as lectures-in-progress, following Foucault's inversion of Clausewitz and his genealogy of race and war discourse.
Best paired with
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan