The Place of Sovereignty. Issue 1 (1st January 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Erlenbusch, Verena
• Is Part Of: Critical horizons. Volume 14:Issue 1(2013)
• Page Start: 44
• Page End: 69
• Publication Date: 2013-01-01
• Subjects: Agamben -- biopolitics -- Butler -- Foucault -- governmentality -- sovereignty; Critical theory -- Periodicals; 142.05
• DOI: 10.1179/15685160X13A.0000000003
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1440-9917

Abstract

Abstract: This article addresses the relationship between sovereignty, biopolitics and governmentality in the work of Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault. By unpacking Foucault's genealogy of modern governmentality, it responds to a criticism leveled against Foucauldian accounts of power for their alleged abandonment of the traditional model of power in juridico-institutional terms in favor of an understanding of power as purely productive. This claim has most significantly been developed by Agamben in " Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life". I argue that Judith Butler's analysis of power, in particular in her essay "Indefinite Detention", presents a more differentiated account of power that registers the significance of practices of sovereignty and resonates with Foucault's lectures on "Security, Territory, Population".