Security

Abstract

The publication in French in 2004 of the course of lectures delivered at the Collège de France in 1977–8 under the title Security, Territory, Population re-launched the discussion of the way in which Michel Foucault analysed security in relationship with the police, discipline and punishment on the one side, and with liberalism, risk and biopolitics on the other (Foucault, 2004b: p. 50). In addition, it took on a new dimension in the context of the discussion of the politics of counterterrorism after 9/11 and the interpretation of the ‘dispositifs of security’ as exceptional dispositifs which suspended the rule of law and gave authority to the widening of police powers of surveillance.¹ Is it possible, starting from this series of lectures, now nearly 30 years old, to interpret differently the issues which surround security? How can we avoid the fetishism surrounding Foucault and make the text ‘work’? What does this body of material have to say to us?