B8908 - Governance and Governmentality (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

This class will delve into the theoretical thought of Michel Foucault in the twentieth century. During the course, students will achieve the necessary tools to debate and apply the concepts of governance and governmentality, with particular attention to Foucault's "technologies of the self" and his conceptualization of material agency, studying the methods and practices that individuals employ to shape their own identities, thoughts, and behaviors and self-conduct within the framework of societal norms. The class will investigate how institutions and so-called scientific discourses are not something inevitable that must be accepted, but rather, they are constructed and can be critically examined.

Course contents

This course will be conducted entirely in English.

The course 'Governance and governmentality' is taught in English and requires active participation in discussions and written assignments in the same language (English will not be assessed).

Why does a state need to know how many of you there are, what you earn, where you live, before it can govern you? One answer treats these questions as problems of coordination: categories such as “population,” “risk,” “compliance,” or “standard” exist to make otherwise incompatible actors, agencies, markets, individuals, legible to one another and capable of acting together, even without a single command center. Under this view, classification is a technical achievement in the service of coordination, and governance names this work of standard-setting itself. This course starts from the same categories but asks a different question of them: not how do they coordinate action, but what kind of subject do they make thinkable and governable in the first place? This is Foucault’s route — governmentality and it treats population, risk, and compliance not as coordination devices but as productive classifications that constitute the very subjects they claim only to describe. The two vocabularies look at the same objects, namely classification, calculation, standard-setting, but disagree about what classification is fundamentally for: coordinating existing actors, or constituting the subjects who will count as actors at all. One aim of this course is to keep both questions in view, and to use whatever semiotic training you already have – reading codes and classifications as productive rather than descriptive – as a tool for taking both governance and governmentality discourse apart, the way you would take apart any other text.

This course is not organized as a history of Foucault’s intellectual development. Instead, it is built around five recurring problems: how an object of government is constituted, how a body is disciplined, how one governs without commanding, whether analysis can remain non-prescriptive while still being political, and what form of government algorithmic environments produce.

Each module pairs Foucauldian texts, interviews, dialogues, with authors who apply, extend, or challenge them, from science and technology studies to feminist theory to security studies and others. During the course Foucault will be read and analyzed alongside peers, critiques and debates, as an ongoing argument about what his analytics of power can and cannot do, and about what it gains or loses next to the governance vocabulary it is often bundled with — or mistaken for.

The course can be thought as a toolkit course. By the end of the course, students will be able to have their own toolbox, to take any contemporary case — an app, a policy, a border, a classification system — and ask of it both what a governance analysis would ask and what Foucauldian approach would ask, and know why the answers differ.

Modules

Module 1 — How is an object of government constituted?
From taxonomy to population; classification schemes producing the objects they claim only to describe; statistics and sexuality as parallel cases of objects made governable through naming

Module 2 — How is an individual body disciplined?
Discipline, examination, and the norm as techniques that act directly on bodies rather than through law or classification.

Module 3 — How does one govern without commanding?
The Foucault's "conduct of conduct"; paralleled with coordination without hierarchy.

Module 4 — Can analysis remain non-prescriptive while still being political?
Foucault's "The Subject and Power," paralleled with recent feminist STS Scholarship.

Module 5 — What form(s) of governmentality algorithmic environments may enhance?
Returns to the regulatory environment of "The Birth of Biopolitics" to ask: is algorithmic government is a mutation or a rupture?

Readings/Bibliography

The mandatory for both attending and non attending students, made of journal articles and book chapters, will be available on Virtuale beginning 2027.

Excerpts from the following readings will be studied and discussed in class.

Mandatory readings:

By Michel Foucault:

• The Archaeology of Knowledge, [ed. or. Archéologie du Savoir, Paris: Gallimard, 1969, Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972 

• The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, 1970 [ed. or. Les Mots et les Choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines, Paris: Gallimard 1966] (some sections discussed during seminars)

• "Governmentality", in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 87–104.

• The Subject and Power, «Critical Inquiry», Vol. 8, No. 4 (Summer, 1982), pp. 777-795

• Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.

• History of Sexuality, voll. 4. London: Penguin Books.

Other authors

• Judith Butler (2007). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

• Foucault/Deleuze. Intellectuals and Power, 1972.

• John Law (2019) “Material Semiotics”, Heterogeneities.com, pp. 1-19. Link [http://www.heterogeneities.net/publications/Law2019MaterialSemiotics.pdf]

• Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton (eds) Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1988.

• Judy Wajcman, Technofeminism, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2004

Teaching methods

The teaching style emphasises interactivity. Classes comprise lectures by the lecturer and classroom discussions.

The aim of classroom activities is threefold: 1) to support and develop students' understanding of the literature; 2) to support and develop their analytical and research skills prior to formal assessment; 3) to promote peer learning.

To achieve these objectives, the drafts of the paper to be submitted for final assessment will first be discussed collegially in class (see assessment methods).

The course encourages both group and individual activities.

Film and video screenings will be part of the methods adopted.

Assessment methods

Assessment Method

The course is organized in 15 classes and corresponds to 6 credits.

The learning process of attending students is assessed through participation in class discussions and a final paper. Ideas for the paper will be discussed collectively in class beforehand.

Attending students 

Students who attend at least 75% of the lessons, 12 lessons.

• They will write a final paper (minimum 5,000, maximum 7,000 words, including notes and references) based on the compulsory and chosen texts from the bibliography. The paper should be sent to the teacher one week before the exam via email. It will be discussed on the exam day, to confirm or improve the grade. The teacher will communicate the grade to the students via email before the exam day
  

• Any editorial/citation style is admitted, provided it is applied consistently. Students must include their name, student ID number and email address, the title of the course, and the date of submission on the cover page.

• Use of AI/large language models: allowed for proofreading purposes only; must be declared.

 

Non-attending students

Students who attend less than 75% of the lessons are considered non-attending. Non-attending students must choose two texts from the non-attending reading list; the oral exam will cover the compulsory readings together with these two selected texts, and is designed to verify the student's grasp of the material.

 

In both cases, particular weight is given to the student's ability to engage critically with the sources and materials listed in the bibliography, and to draw on relevant information and examples to illustrate and connect the themes and issues covered in the course (and, for attending students, discussed in class). The assessment also considers the student's overall grasp of the topics, together with a critical approach to the material and confident, accurate use of subject-specific terminology.

More specifically, the exam evaluates:

• factual command of the subject matter;
• the capacity to summarize and analyze key themes and concepts;
• familiarity with relevant terminology and the ability to apply it effectively.

Grading Criteria

A good to excellent grade reflects accurate language, solid factual knowledge, and the ability to present the chosen topic or texts both synthetically and critically.
A sufficient to fair grade reflects acceptable language use and the ability to competently summarize the content of the chosen texts.
Failure to pass reflects weak linguistic command and fragmentary knowledge of the chosen topic or texts, or extended and undeclared use of AI. 

Exam Sessions

Exam sessions will be held monthly in April, June, July, September, October, and November, and are open to all students.

Teaching tools

The teaching style favors interactivity. Classes include lectures by the teacher, debates and discussions in the classroom.

Teaching material, when not protected by copyright, is available through the Virtual Teaching Platform (http://virtuale.unibo.it) of the University of Bologna. Texts protected by copyright beyond a certain number of pages are available from the University of Bologna library system.

Anyone wishing to take this exam must register on Virtuale.

Office hours

See the website of Chiara Loschi