Security, Race and War

Abstract

Race first figures as central to Foucault’s analytic of modern power and politics during the course of a series of lectures that he gave in the mid- 1970s; specifically in “Society Must Be Defended”, the first lecture course in the series. That analytic of power preoccupied the work of the 1970s. The lectures coincide, for example, with the publication of Surveiller et Punir (February, 1975) and La Volonté de Savoir (October, 1977) (Elden, 2006; Marks, 2000). Stuart Elden has also noted that they were contemporaneous in addition with the publication of Volume 1 of The History of Sexuality. “Society Must Be Defended” ran from January to March while The History of Sexuality appeared in December of 1976. As Elden concludes, ‘the published volume being an overview of the projected six part series … Volume 1 was in part a summary of lectures that must surely have been written by the time the book was delivered to Gallimard’ (Elden, 2002: n.127). Some of the key analytical themes broached in 1976 are also pursued throughout the succeeding lecture courses, Security, Territory, Population (Foucault, 2004b [1977–8]) and The Birth of Biopower (Foucault, 2004a [1978–9]).

Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilised for the purposes of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity.