The Governmentalization of the State

Abstract

Foucault’s collision with the regime of security. Late in the evening on November 16, 1977, a police van carrying Klaus Croissant left La prison de la Santé in Paris. Foucault was to be found in front of the prison along with 25 other people to form a symbolic barricade.¹ The demonstrators had decided that the happening was to be peaceful, but — according to Foucault — the group was dispersed by the police, and the roughly 40 officers beat the demonstrators “with a rare display of brutality as if dealing with a screaming mob.”² Foucault’s personal payoff from the events of that evening was a broken rib.