The ‘government of men’: Moving beyond Foucault’s binaries

Abstract

Recent controversies surrounding Michel Foucault suggest tensions and unresolved issues in his unfinished work. Here we interrogate Foucault's legacy in relation to his claim that the welfare-state is a secularization of the Christian pastorate. We challenge Foucault's binary narrative of the Christian flock vs. the Graeco-Roman citizen and expand the focus to other "technologies of power" in Medieval Islam. Rather than an outburst of governmentality in modernity, we suggest a longue-durée history of which the Christian pastorate was merely one facet. This non-binary framework indicates that Foucault's claim of a "demonic" fusion of sovereign and pastoral power in modern politics requires significant revisitation. Finally, we claim that Foucault's muchdiscussed fascination with neoliberalism may have roots in this one-sided narrative regarding the birth of the welfare-state.