Governmentality

Governmentality is a concept first developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in the later years of his life, roughly between 1977 and his death in 1984, particularly in his lectures at the Collège de France during this time.

The concept has been elaborated further from an "Anglo-Neo Foucauldian" perspective in the social sciences, especially by authors such as Peter Miller, Nikolas Rose, and Mitchell Dean. Governmentality can be understood as:

Governmentality may also be understood as:

This term was thought by some commentators to be made by the "…linking of governing ("gouverner") and modes of thought ("mentalité")". In fact, it was not coined by uniting words "gouvernement" and "mentalité", but simply by making gouvernement into gouvernementalité just like musical into musicalité [i.e. government + -al- adjective + -ité abstract noun] (see Michel Senellart's "Course Context" in Foucault's "Security, territory, population" lectures). To fully understand this concept, it is important to realize that in this case, Foucault does not only use the standard, strictly political definition of "governing" or government used today, but he also uses the broader definition of governing or government that was employed until the eighteenth century. That is to say, that in this case, for Foucault, "...'government' also signified problems of self-control, guidance for the family and for children, management of the household, directing the soul, etc." In other words, for our purposes, government is "…the conduct of conduct..."

In his lectures at the Collège de France, Foucault often defines governmentality as the "art of government" in a wide sense, i.e. with an idea of "government" that is not limited to state politics alone, that includes a wide range of control techniques, and that applies to a wide variety of objects, from one's control of the self to the "biopolitical" control of populations. In the work of Foucault, this notion is indeed linked to other concepts such as biopolitics and power-knowledge. The genealogical exploration of the modern state as "problem of government" does not only deepen Foucault’s analyses on sovereignty and biopolitics; it offers an analytics of government which refines both Foucault’s theory of power and his understanding of freedom.

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