The War of Races and the Constitution of the State: Foucault's «Il faut défendre la société» and the Politics of Calculation

What is meant by the word constitution? If we take the standard phrase "the constitution of the United States of America," at a most obvious and literal level, it refers to the document which begins "We the people of the United States . . ." and is signed by George Washington and others. It, of course, also means the framework of laws which that document initiated. But at the same time, the phrase could be taken as the "making" of the United States of America—constitution as a process rather than as a result—the Constitution's signing and its subsequent interpretation and amendment being but part of that process. Equally, one might suggest that the United States of America is constituted—that is, is made up—of fifty states, 3.6 million square miles of territory, 264 million inhabitants, et cetera. Another would be to take the more medical sense—the "physical nature or character of the body in regard to healthiness, strength, vitality, etc." (Oxford English Dictionary). In other words, a diagnostic, a physician's report: an address on the state of the union. This alerts us to the plural sense of the word—legal, political, biological, and medical. ¹

The word constitution, in this plural sense, plays an important role within Michel Foucault's work. This is particularly true in his 1975–1976 lecture course «Il faut défendre la société» ["Society must be defended," or perhaps "protected"], where he discusses the constitution of the state. In Foucault's work, the notions of the political and medical come together particularly in the concept bio-power, a term that relates both to the politics of constitution and the constitution of politics. ² Given that bio-power is introduced in the final chapter of the first volume of The History of Sexuality—La Volonté de savoir [The will to knowledge]—and that «Il faut défendre la société» is contemporaneous to this book, some interesting parallels can be drawn. Elsewhere I have argued that the most profitable way to read the lecture courses of the mid 1970s (of which only «Il faut défendre la société» and Les Anormaux [The abnormals] are so far published) is "as the most thorough treatment we are likely to get from what would have been in the originally planned set of volumes" of The History of Sexuality. ³ The most relevant of these to «Il faut défendre la société» is the projected sixth and final volume, Population et races (Population and races). Four themes, then—constitution, the state, population, and race—will shape the reading of this course.

One Chapter, Two Lectures

Foucault claimed in a 1977 interview that the final chapter of La Volonté de savoir was frequently neglected in the literature. It would not be wrong to claim the same is true today. Foucault suggested that though the book was short, he suspected people did not reach the last chapter. "All the same," he remarked, "it is the foundation of the book." ⁴ In that final chapter, which Daniel Defert claims was the first part to be written, Foucault discusses race, the state, and the right of death and power over life. ⁵ The final lecture of «Il faut défendre la société» (delivered on 17 March 1976) covers many of the same themes as this chapter (the book was published at the end of 1976). ⁶ If in La Volonté de savoir the chapter seems somewhat odd, misplaced—which perhaps accounts for its relative neglect in the secondary literature—in «Il faut défendre la société» it is a much more logical conclusion. ⁷

While the last lecture of this course is familiar material, the first two lectures are perhaps even better...